Bleating Against Amazon

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

This is the part of this blog where Sarah takes off the gloves, turns the picture of Heinlein to the wall* so he won’t be shocked by what she’s about to say, and then speaks in the way she learned when fishwives argued near her.

You’ve been warned.

There is a lot to be said for someone of my temperament and approaching an age when I no longer suffer fools gladly (or indeed at all) not going near my main facebook page.  There is no time to block out ever custard-head on facebook, and no matter how many times I warn them this isn’t safe** – nor indeed sane – they persist in posting stuff that drives me nuts.

I count it as a great proof of maturity that most of the time I simply shake my head and go on to my groups or to my dedicated page without bothering to bring out the baseball bat with the rusty nails in.

But then, periodically, I find the stupid is being echoed all over and the same websites linked over and over again, with the same nonsensical points, which tells me it’s not only a coordinated campaign, but it’s a coordinated campaign being brought to bear by “someone above” with a good publicity department.  And when that campaign is both crazy and stupid – and it’s amazing how often that happens and how often the bleating hordes echo this nonsense – I sometimes lose my patience.  This is not a good thing, because though I’m more controlled than in my teen years, when I was kicked off the rugby team for unnecessary roughness, it is often a distinction without meaning.  I no longer pound you — most of you took the precaution of living out of reach, you sneaky fiends you — I DO foam at the mouth and punch walls.

So, what has got me off my cherubic and positively laid-back posture lately?  Well, this morning when I innocently opened face book, to see if a friend had answered on our latest message exchange, I found that people all over are posting against Amazon.

Now, this is of course nothing new.  For the last several months we’ve been hearing the rumblings of this, as people whine, complain and moan about everything in Amazon, from the fact that they point out big publishers DO set those outrageous e-book prices, to the fact that they’ll lower your prices if they find you’re selling cheaper elsewhere.  Oh, yeah, also if you are a small press and refuse to give them the authority to do that, they won’t do business with you.

This is more of the same, with a sustained, high pitch whine (yes, this is reference to dog whistle, why?) that “someone” do something to stop Amazon having this dreadful power to… control the way they wish to run their own business?

To every one – particularly the geniuses calling themselves “progressive writers and poets” – echoing this load of nonsense: are you crazy or stupid?

Of course, it’s entirely possible you are both, but which one are you MORE?

I’m not going to deny that Amazon is an 800 lb gorilla or that Amazon is a corporation.  Of course that last, for most of you, is enough to consider them eeeeeevil.  That is because most of you are either college students or are living like college students in your parents’ basement, from stolen cheetos.  (Okay, some of you are also living in the insulated ghettos of academia and/or media, where no knowledge of business need intrude.)  The horrible news I have for you is that I can guarantee most of your favorite writers (unless they’re peers, living in basements next to yours) are corporations.  We incorporate as a way to cut down on the burden our tax code imposes on the self employed.  I, myself, am part of a corporation.  Weirdly, I haven’t noticed any marked increase of evil since I became so.

Now I’ll agree with you that all corporations when they get massive become … odd.  This is a function of ALL human institutions when they get big enough.  Keep that point in mind, we’ll come back to it.

Having watched as the large corporation my husband worked for throughout the nineties went through weird purges and personality cult phases, cut out research and development when they most needed it or made absolutely asinine moves, I came to the conclusion any human bureaucracy grown large enough behaves much like the ancient Roman Empire or a Communist country.  When a personality is purged, for instance, everyone he promoted is struck down or laid off, regardless of whether he’s needed or not.  And periodically the edicts from above make about as much sense as going off with the legions to fight Neptune.

Has Amazon reached this point yet?  Weirdly, no.  So far Amazon is keeping “with it” in the sense that the decisions it has made have benefited its business, which, btw, is the goal of any commercial enterprise, corporation or not.  In the process and probably not deliberately – but as a result of the fact that New York Publishing has been determined to stay on course to suicide – they have made it possible for people to self publish and to circumvent the gatekeepers which were NOT ONLY picking winners and losers but also effectively dissuading people from reading as a form of entertainment (Look up how print runs have fallen since the seventies.  No, it’s not TV.  News flash:  There was TV in the seventies too.)

Will Amazon reach that point – well, DUH – is it run by humans?  Why, yes, I believe it is.  Yes, at some point Amazon will grow sclerotic and/or in pursuing its own interest will cut out small publishers and Indies – if it finds a business reason to.  Right now it’s hard to imagine what that business reason would be, so I have to assume it would be a sign that it has grown sclerotic.

And when Amazon grows sclerotic, it will present an opportunity for competitors to come up and do something better and faster and, in their turn, become the next Big Evil TM.

IF you think it’s already making mistakes and that its decisions no longer benefit you, then for the love of Mike and all the little angels, start your own competitor.  Exploit what you see as weaknesses on Amazon and go for it.  Trust me, starting a business on the web requires remarkably little investment.  If the lot of you who are posting this nonsense can’t each of you chip in five dollars and get the five thousand or so to start your own model, you don’t have the courage of your convictions.

And don’t come bleating at me that Amazon is too big and you can’t compete with it.  When Amazon started out, big chain bookstores were at the apex of their power and people laughed at Amazon.  “Who wants to buy books online?” they said.  And “Why do they allow everyone to do reviews without credentials?” they said.

No?  You don’t want to do that?  Not surprising.  You’re not creative enough to come up with a competing model, you say?  You need government to curb Amazon’s excesses?

Tread carefully, my sheepies.  Tread very carefully.  Amazon is private property.  (Yes, of its shareholders, and your point is?)  What you’re asking is for an organization that is bigger and therefore MARKEDLY more corrupt than Amazon and whose power is based NOT on getting you to buy anything but on the fact they have police and an army and can throw people in jail, to go and take someone’s property away because you don’t like what they’re doing with it.  Not only will whatever government can/chooses to do to Amazon get so distorted in the end that the law of unintended consequences will make it a nightmare, but it will further weaken property rights in this country.  Places that don’t have property rights also have no other rights.  And you won’t be able to do anything, because government, unlike Amazon, has the power to enforce its edicts, and you can’t REALLY set up a competing government.  (No matter what your courses in revolutionary justice told you.)

So… are you crazy or stupid?  There’s evidence in favor of both.  You’re crazy if you’re repeating this meme to appear cool and hip and you have no clue where it will lead.  You’re stupid if you don’t see where it would lead, should it be successful, is back to the arms of the establishment, where big publishers can pick winners and losers.  Qui bono?  The establishment.  (This will shock you but most traditional publishers are international corporations, btw.) The establishment which could sell crap if it pushed it enough, and which is now losing that ability.  You want to take us back to the bad old days.  And you call yourself progressive.  And the irony hasn’t KILLED you yet.

On the other hand, maybe you’re neither crazy nor stupid.  Maybe you are the kind that publishers would have pushed, and you know that your writing in fact stinks on ice and that this is the only way you can make a living.  In which case, you’re simply venal and hypocritical but perfectly rational.

However, take it from me, that progress to the past for which you hanker would only take you back to a system that had grown unsustainable, which is why Amazon was able to arise.  If you take down Amazon, a hundred Amazons will arise to break your favored oligopoly.

So, darlings, sweeties, difficult as it is, maybe you should strive to have an original thought in your pampered little lives and either learn to write and become good enough to sell in the changed market, or learn to start a business that competes with Amazon.  Or BOTH.

Yes, I know, either goes against everything you’ve learned and will make you stand out from the herd.  But guess what, at best the herd gets sheared in the end.  At worst?  It gets eaten.

Give my way a try instead.  Who knows?  It might even work.

*those of you who read Giovanni Guareschi will know the reference.

** Yes, I’m joking.  At most you make me angry, which means these days you make me rant.  For all I know you find that funny.

Update: Welcome Passive Voice readers.  I’m always honored to be linked by PG, one of my almost-daily reads.  If you have time, poke around.  There’s free fiction under the Witchfinder and Free Short Story tabs (Okay, it’s unedited free fiction.  It’s an experiment) and generally the people who hang out around here are interesting and informative if at times a tad-bit fractious.

141 thoughts on “Bleating Against Amazon”

  3. I’m not sure why you would turn Heinlein’s picture to the wall for this post. In his socialist youth, he wrote “Lifeline”, and one of the side points there was that government had no business interfering in competition — especially not to benefit the existing establishment. In his libertarian maturity, he wrote “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”, which was all about how to keep government out of our lives and our business. In between? “The Man Who Sold the Moon”, “Rocket Ship Galileo”, “The Rolling Stones”… I can’t think of a single story or essay he wrote that would run counter to your theme here. (Confession: I’ve probably only read 70% or so of his works, so I may have missed something where he advocated government intervention in the free market. But if I saw something like that, I would look for “and Spider Robinson” on the cover.)

    As for the Amazon haters… If they somehow manage to enlist government in their cause, I’ll get angry (but I haven’t seen that succeeding yet). Until then, I’m happy to let them exclude their works from the largest market out there. If that’s what they want, why should I try to dissuade them.

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  5. One of the sad truths I have learned from having to get a grown up job is that there will always be someone who complains even as they enjoy the perks of a company like Amazon. I would guarantee 75% of the complainers bought a product from Amazon or a similar online entity within the last 3 months. What they forget is that Amazon has set a pretty high bar of competitors to meet, that combined with Customer Service, makes it REALLY good at it’s job. That’s just a fact of being a business. If you don’t like it, go find one of the few deserted islands and hang out with Wilson.

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  6. You’re a corporation? Now I’m confused. Should a conservative like me be for you as a corporation, or against you as a woman ;-) ? How about I’ll be for you as long as you don’t abort any plans you come up with for spinning off baby corporations?

    More seriously, “progressive” seems to mean “wants more establishment control”. I hope they’re as wrong about the future as they are in the present. G-d help us otherwise.

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      1. I am GENUINELY worried that we are approaching a massive era of gov’t intervention done in the name of “jobs” and indie publishing is just the beginning.

        3d printing has the potential to revolutionize manufacturing, we are talking near Star Trek replicator tech here. There is no way that those Unions and corporations are going to go quietly into that good night.

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        2. I am GENUINELY worried that we are approaching a massive era of gov’t intervention done in the name of “jobs” and indie publishing is just the beginning.

          The middle of the 20th century was the “golden” age of the totalitarian state because the most effective information technology were broadcast (radio, movies, and television). This meant that to win the hearts and minds of the population you had to be a wealth organization such as the state.

          These days, our communication technology is a lot more individualized and narrow-cast. It is a lot harder to prevent people from communicating while keeping them productive. Sure, a country can pull a North Korea, but North Korea types are poor. Poor countries tend to lose wars.

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  8. I have a weird take on the whole Evil Amazon thing.

    1: I think they’d be perfectly evil if they thought it advantaged them. I remember their first KDP contract, and there were some pretty abusive aspects to it.

    1a: My personal conspiracy theory is that Amazon is deliberately trying to put the Nook (and B&N), specifically, out of action. That’s neither here nor there for the purposes of this argument.

    2: With competition, Amazon steps up to the plate. Apple made noises about the future iBookstore and BOOM! Amazon has a 70% royalty option instead of only a 30% one! (Or 35%. I forget what it was; it was low for the time, I was informed when I was making interested noises about it.)

    Therefore, my conclusion isn’t that the government should get involved (unless Amazon starts (openly) engaging in monopolistic practices, because a monopoly can use its clout to endeavor to crush any attempted competition while it’s young and squishy). My conclusion is that the other electronic-book stores should get off their dadgum duffs already and STOP BEING OUT-COMPETED, DAMMIT! B&N, Apple? This means YOU. Kobo, too. Diesel and Sony have horses in the race, I know.

    So long as Amazon has competition, it will have an interest in keeping its content-providers (that’s the indie authors, more than the publishers, I think…) happy. So long as Amazon has competition, it will be a useful tool for indie authors. But that saying about “Fire is a good tool, but a poor master”? Applies to the Kindle Fire just as much. ;)

    I do also think it behooves authors to investigate other avenues in parallel with Amazon, whether they take those avenues for themselves or not. Amazon may be the biggest fishie in the pond, but becoming emotionally convinced that Amazon Can Do No Wrong will, soon or late, lead to relationships with Amazon being like those of traditional publishers: “well, there’s a lot of flaws and they’ve reduced royalty rates, but where else can we go to get published?”

    Better to keep them a little concerned that their cash cows might dry up, or that someone else might have better milk, than to blindly devote all loyalty.

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    1. B&N for instance is HELLISH to establish and account in compared to Amazon (A sales account) and hasn’t offered anything to compete with KDP select. So… My sales with them are about 1/20th those with Amazon. Can/should they get competitive? I’d love them to.

      I did say Amazon worked for its interests (DUH.) Right now, they happen to also serve the authors ;)

      On monopolistic practices — it’s impossible to establish a true monopoly WITHOUT government help. I know that sounds counterintuitive, but so it is. The real monopolies we’ve had — energy, transportation, etc. were all government aided and abetted, intentionally or not. And ever since Rome a monopoly goes… the way of the post office.

      I’d love nothing better than for Amazon to have serious competition. Unfortunately I don’t have an idea to out-compete them :-P I’m just a word slinger.

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      1. The easiest way I found to get on bn.com (from Troll Valley from Lars Walker) is to put the book on lulu.com. Lulu does the rest, as long as you give them a fairly pristine RTF as a starting point.

        The royalty is about 62%.

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      2. PubIt is annoying? Meh. I’ll go through Smashwords for the novels, then, as well as the short stories. (Due to an interesting quirk of how Smashwords does royalties from B&N sales, I get more from Smashwords, for a 99c short story, than I would from B&N direct! I would probably technically get more for the novels, since they’re at $4.99 right now, if I went direct… But if it’s a pain in the neck, no point to it. I’ll just wait for the “in review” to go away.)

        And I know what you mean about B&N being non-competitive! I have no idea how anyone finds anything on B&N. I can’t find my own stories even when they’re selling! Same with Sony, for that matter; my freebies do well there (duh), but finding them is trickier than I like.

        My ideas for out-competing them would be to have an equal-or-better search function, far better customer support (especially for the authors! Amazon’s support for me-as-author has been less than stellar), a less-painful sales account, either some bribery to go exclusive with them or some other form of making authors not want to go exclusive with other people (tricky…), someone to actually look at the ratings so they don’t turn into some kind of weird tumblr chat… Something that compares the text to at least some sampling of other stuff to try to cut down on plagiarism might be interesting; Amazon doesn’t have that yet.

        What might be fairly awesome is if someone — like B&N — could tap Good Reviewer volunteers. People who read and write detailed, non-spoilery reviews. Give them credit towards more e-books every time they write a review for one! (Diesel does this, kinda, but I don’t know if they have a critical mass of readers to make it work well. Plus they aren’t very good at figuring out which genre something is in, and don’t allow readers to tag stuff. …I have no idea why my G-rated SF has “similar to” listings that are erotica! :( )

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        1. Beth, my problem with Smashwords — other than the mess their meatgrinder often does to titles that have been uploaded to it — is that it only pays quarterly. Add in the additional delay caused because the stores they are selling through only report to them quarterly, and you can have delays in payment of six months or more. In this day and age, there is no reason for that.

          I am sorry to hear you’ve had a hard time communicating with the KDP folks at Amazon. They have always been quick to respond and help me with anything I’ve ever needed.

          Regarding the plagiarism issue, every store has it, not just Amazon. What I have seen personally is that Amazon has been the only retailer to question us at Naked Reader Press when we’ve put up an e-book that has already been registered for copyright. None of the others, BN included, have done so.

          I’m not sure what you mean by a “less painful” sales account. I love the fact I can keep a close eye on sales at Amazon. I wish others were as easy to do so with. I wish sales on BN’s PubIt program didn’t often just disappear without explanation (and yes, this has happened several times to us. This month, for example, we had sales reported for a couple of titles one morning. Later that day, they were gone. Not refunded. Just gone.

          Do I wish there was someone out there giving Amazon competition? You betcha. But, right now, I’m seeing the others compounding their problems instead of making it easier and more enticing for authors to use them. Apple requires you have an Apple computer to upload directly to iTunes. Otherwise, you have to use a repackager of some sort to get your books listed with them. BN has one of the worst search engines ever. Smashwords is too limited on formatting by their meatgrinder program. I could go on.

          Your reviewer idea would be nice, except there is one really big problem with it. Who is going to pay for the books they are reviewing? If they get the books for free, they have to reveal that in their reviews. Or they should. If they get the books for free, that means no sale and no money to the author. Who is going to determine what books and who should do the reviews and how many folks can get the free books?

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          1. The Meatgrinder and I, thus far, get along splendidly. (Though something seems to happen when it goes to B&N, near as I can tell, that sometimes does Weird Font Changes.) I dunno why everyone else hates it; it’s a lot simpler than other formatting games I’ve had to play in the past, and a lot simpler than what I have to do to make sure that Amazon’s converter doesn’t introduce errors due to a (possibly fixed, but I don’t trust it) bug that their support people knew nothing of.

            The Other People Via Smashwords payment timing is, indeed, a nuisance — on the other hand, up till this month (jury is out on this month), Smashwords has paid me at least twice as much, total, than Amazon. (And B&N does still owe me-via-Smashwords a couple bucks…)

            The “less-painful bit” is more of a “B&N needs to clean up their act” — though Amazon does not actually make it easy to figure out how much they owe the author, unlike Smashwords, which keeps a running tally.

            Diesel has a “bounty” on reviews, and presumably if the credits to the reviewers’ accounts were small enough, it could come out of profits off ebooks in other situations. Perhaps it could come out of a fund, like the Kindle Select program has! Divide fund by X reviews… The way I’d consider the project would be to gather up the Top-Rated Reviews, and have a physical person give a glance-over. Then individually recruit the reviewer. (Much as Amazon will deliberately recruit an author…) It does, however, require people actually investing in their websites. Maybe B&N or Sony should do a Kickstarter…

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            1. Weird. Would you mind telling us what genre you’re publishing. This is a “interesting” not a doubt. I’m just totally puzzled that you seem to have inverse totals from everyone else I know publishing both places, so…

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              1. Anthropomorphic science fiction short stories, at the 99c range. Since Smashwords gives me at least 50c per sale (once the Paypal fees are extracted from my 80%) rather than 35c, similar sales net me more from Smashwords.

                What advertising I do, I tend to wind up pointing to the Smashwords site more than the Amazon one. (I’m using Project Wonderful, with zero-dollar bids; this means I tend to lose the America views, and I don’t want to point non-Americans to the US Amazon site — Smashwords is less fussy.) I don’t know how many actual sales that’s racked up, though; I point to my freebies by preference, and while I do tend to see a correlation of freebie “sales,” not so much the for-pay ones. (Yet; it’s easy to grab a freebie and not-read it for a long time.)

                Now, it may change to favor Amazon since I’ve gotten, just this month, a couple of novels up. ($4.99 each.) With those, my sales are, after 3 days (*snort*), slightly better at Amazon — and some of the “sales” at Smashwords are freebies, since I sent my mom and friends coupons. (Smashwords is great for that.) And the differential of 80% (minus Paypal fee) to 70% (minus download fee) is going to be less.

                It may even change for the short stories; I’m getting on more of the “also bought” lists for other books in the anthropomorphic niche market, on Amazon, and I think that’s bringing in sales.

                But so far, I’ve had twice as much cash out of Smashwords as Amazon. :)

                (Or do you mean the royalty tweak? Smashwords passes on a flat 60ish% royalty from B&N, no matter the price. B&N has a tiered royalty rate like Amazon’s, so if I published a 99c thing with PubIt directly, I’d be getting around 35% royalties. I’d been thinking I might take the larger books (which fall into B&N’s 65% or whatever royalty tier) directly to PubIt, but if you say it’s a pain, I might as well consolidate it all via Smashwords. Quarterly payments are a nuisance, but they keep track of the money in a much more transparent way than Amazon does.)

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              2. BTW – Joe Nassise was reporting much the same situation (and Joe seems pretty honest and open about his self-pub). Some people’s work really does do better on B&N. I’d love to know why.

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                1. Me too. I wasn’t doubting Beth, I was trying to figure it out. For what it’s worth, the single mystery property I sell on B & N is outselling the same property on Amazon. Go figure?

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                2. I suspect it’s luck. I pull from my memory some study or other where they had pools of people, who listened to music clips and “liked” them or some-such, so that they showed up more often as recommendations for everyone else in that pool. Different pools had different clips rise to the top, kind of randomly. So hit the right sub-group for something, and boom, you’ve got popularity and it keeps showing up a bit more.

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  9. “Okay, some of you are also living in the insulated ghettos of academia and/or media, where no knowledge of business need intrude.”

    Ouch. Trim your sights and watch the collateral damage there Hoyt! I don’t believe I deserved that. There are SOME people in academia with a clue.

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      1. Also, I think “no knowledge of business need intrude” is not incompatible with “some people have it anyway.” Sure, there are business-savvy people in academia; but I think you’re outnumbered. From the profs I’ve dealt with, I might guess you’re VASTLY outnumbered.

        I don’t blame academics for that blind spot. It’s only natural. The incentive structures are just different: what a tenure committee or a grant committee or a peer reviewer looks for are different from what a paying customer looks for. An elegant proof is not the same thing as an elegant package.

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      1. Small rant coming. Fair warning, skip down if you don’t care to hear it, but I have a little bit of a chip on my shoulder regarding academy bashing.

        Ok, okay, “Academia” is a bit of a bogeyman, people. What we are really talking about is a small group of elite scholars in a few elite schools, centered mostly in the liberal arts, humanities and social sciences that have an over-sized influence on media and policy makers in DC. And I agree, those people are clueless and have too much power. Outside of that, you’d be surprised how much practical knowledge and ordinary people there are in education. They lean left as a crowd, it’s true but they are not nearly as clueless. There is a huge difference between a Gender studies professor at Harvard and a vet science prof in Texas Tech, but they are both in academia, and the second group is much larger than the first. Heck, there’s even a difference between the business school at Harvard and the Humanities dept.

        Just saying we ought to target the real problem and not slip into a general anti-intellectualism (Not saying you did that, just being a tad defensive here.) There is an ivory tower but most of us working there never get above the basement level which is not ivory but is instead made of concrete and full of leaky pipes.

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        1. sweetie — you’re wrong. I taught in a community college and half the instructors had their heads firmly where the sun don’t shine. heck, I know high schools where it’s that way. Do I believe there are worthy people teaching? Sure. I even know some. But the field as a whole is due for the same sort of reckoning that publishing is enjoying. And it’s coming.

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          1. Lol. Well..no…I’m not.

            Ok, well now it’s a battle of anecdotes so that’s pointless, but let me try anyway.

            All I can say is I’ve taught for over ten years now at many different institutions, trade schools, community colleges, state schools, and private universities. (adjunct work will do that to you) I’ve worked as staff at Bryn Mawr and Penn too, which are two of the most liberal places you’ll ever see, and I taught at four different art schools (not known for their broad ideological spectrum) and I met a lot of people with a lot of practical skills. They fly fished and bow-hunted deer, fixed up small engines, welded (and not just “art” welding but things like decks and trellises”) canned foods, worked on computers, knitted, made their own artisanal cheese and a ton of other things. Many had businesses on the side in design, landscaping, architectural salvage, etc. Sure some of them were making solar stills and their own biofuel digesters, so they were libs, but that ain’t clueless stuff. Certainly there was a large dollop of the kind of people that are impossible to parody, up for every pop ideology, from hemp to genderless bathrooms, that couldn’t load their own slides into a projector and criticized cars for their pollution while chain smoking, and bemoaned the rich while paying more for organic dogfood. But they weren’t the majority. They knew their subjects and were largely decent sharp people, paid their bills and could walk upright and chew gum at the same time.

            Sorry your experience was different.

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            1. May I ask both of you when? I suspect that US Academia was most liberal in the decade immediately after Vietnam, and has been trending back towards the US average since then.

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              1. I’ve been teaching as an assistant professor since 2008, as an adjunct since 2000 and as a teaching assistant (who had most of the teaching duties) since 1997.

                I think it was pretty liberal. But it varies by discipline and by geographic region. At Temple U. the economics dept across the hall was VERY conservative. The Education dept was HUGELY liberal. (I had friends in both, as we offered Fine arts admin degrees that took business classes and art ed degrees that took ed courses.) The art history dept was was about 75% lib/progressive, 10% moderate and the rest conservative/libertarian but the chair at the time was a big conservative and we all got along fine.
                Everyone knew I was a rural white Mormon male with strong conservative leanings and they disagreed with everything I believed in personally. I still got every assistantship, fellowship and scholarship the dept. offered including the prestigious Rome fellowship. They were very fair and tried to award on academic merit, not politics. Not every dept is the same, but it was very admirable. While working at Bryn Mawr, they sent out a survey on diversity and it was the usual crock of crap. I said I felt vulnerable because there weren’t enough conservative Mormon male supervisors to mentor me. They showed up at my door all concerned and I had to explain to them that no, I was joking, and that I got along fine with my militantly feminist lesbian supervisor and that that was my way of say ing this diversity stuff is BS. They let me say my peace and disagreed strongly. They could have penalized me or passed me over but they didn’t, but instead they promoted me. So even though they were libs, they were very fair.

                Basically I fear that the right is ready to write-off the academy in much the same way the left wrote off the military and I don’t want people to give up on the academy. We gotta fight for parity.

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                1. Travis, no one is saying we should write them off. However, if academia wants to be taken seriously, it needs to return/start teaching and quit indoctrinating. And yes, before you object, there is more indoctrination going on in our schools than any of us want to believe. Our advanced students in high schools, those taking IB or AP courses, are taught that big business is bad and should be “sharing the wealth”. This includes personal wealth. Literature is that of the “oppressed” peoples, glorifying socialism and communism. Our boys are taught they have a thousand years of oppressing women to make up for. Conversely, girls are taught they have to take power anyway they can because, duh, women have always been at the beck and call of men and never had power before. EVER. (rolls eyes) That continues into college where even engineering and other “hard science” majors are required to take women’s studies or similar courses as part of their degree plans. Tell me, what does that have to do with learning the basics of how to plan and then build the proper foundation or bridge or high rise?

                  Does this mean Sarah, or any of the rest of us are saying that everyone in academia is like this? No. But when you have one professor fired for daring to say something negative about a religion where its zealots have sworn to kill all who don’t believe as they do and then another professor who gets up and praises those same zealots for taking a stand against the imperialists of the US, is not only not punished or censored by his university, but is praised for it, well, it’s hard not to wonder about academia as a whole.

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                  1. I agree there is bias and indoctrination but I think it is blown way out of proportion.

                    I think that 90% of my profs. were libs and I got an excellent education. Did I hear more than my fair share of liberal ideas? Yep. Was I indoctrinated? No, and I can’t think of any of my fellow students that changed their beliefs either. All of them left more or less how they came in. I think that there is indoctrination, but it’s oversold. The reality is, my students hardly assimilate the facts of the course, let alone my opinions.

                    And honestly, what engineering professor weaves contraceptive policy into his lectures? That kind of stuff gets them labeled as weird in student evaluations and they are told to knock it off for the most part.

                    Again, I think the problems are largely in the social sciences, liberal arts and humanities and even then only in a few elite schools that have oversized influence, but the kids going there are libs to begin with. If the academy is so good at indoctrinating people why are there so many college grads who are conservative? People with a bachelor’s degrees aren’t any more likely to be libs than conservatives. So if they are indoctrinating people, they suck at it.

                    It’s true that grad students trend liberal, but that’s not because they signed up for another four to eight years of indoctrination. They were liberal to begin with and were self-selected. Basically conservatives don’t go to grad school in equal numbers because they’ve decided the environment is unfriendly. That’s a shame. We can compete there and do succeed when we try. Now, my Art History Ph.D. is worthless, but not because I got it from a bunch of liberals.

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                    1. Sigh. No one said they’re good. No one said anything about politics, either, Travis. What I said is that what they’re teaching is not real world. They teach “victimology economics” (the reason Africa is screwed up is “colonialists” stole all their raw materials. This makes no sense outside marxist economics, which are NOT real and don’t work in the REAL world. I mean, South Africa? You can still pick up diamonds on the beach. Compared to the US it has raw materials falling off its yin yang. Unfortunately its elites are educated in the west and learned that they can’t do anything.) and history that would be unrecognizeable to its own mother, if history had a mother.

                      As for what kids have to take… Travis, you’re not in college NOW. You’re teaching. And you’re teaching in TX. In our college, the bachelor has exploded in hours, because kids in science degrees have to take SO MANY LIBERAL arts courses and they have to be things like “race studies” and “gender studies” — most of which are — regardless of politics — NOT BASED IN REALITY. Nowadays it’s not unusual for kids to take five or six years bachelor degrees. Heck, only reason my older kid isn’t doing that is that he got a year’s credit.

                      And what the problem I was talking about there is — not the kids, no they’re not that good at indoctrination, although I wish they TAUGHT real stuff to these poor kids — but the teachers themselves who are isolated in a bubble.

                      What you’re talking about is different anyway. Arts teachers/professors and others who own businesses have to have a little more clue. The professors of purely theoretical stuff? TRUST me, many of my friends are among these people — blue they got none.

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              2. well, eighties and then early 2000s. Also, my kid is in college now. I’m not going to discuss what he’s had to wade through because it’s his business but I was appalled at the history and economics text books, both of which weren’t.

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                1. Well Sarah, we are going to have to disagree on this, and I think you are totally wrong. Yes, there are a lot of worthless classes out there, but most of what is taught in our schools today, yes even in those bastions of academic nuttery, is solid good stuff. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be able to do my job.

                  I took a gender studies class (required to) and was pleasantly surprised. They debunked the whole Mother Goddess myth, the Amazon myth and tons of others. For every victimology course syllabus that are genuinely risible, that finds its way onto the internet there are many more which are decent courses. It can be done well, and for the most part…is.

                  And I entered politics into this discussion because this is what this is about. Conservatives do not believe that liberals in academia are, in general, providing their kids with good educations. Those fears are overplayed. They generally are.

                  Again, worth varies by dept. and region. I taught in PA for most of those ten years and it is in my experience actually less likely to teach BS than TX, so you aren’t really applying facts as much as you are applying stereotypes, not to mention the fact that TX schools vary by region. A degree from UT is very different than say a degree from Texas A&M.

                  Also, I would like to add, that this is not an abstract thing for me. The state gov’t of TX has decided to purge academy on the recommendations of a bunch of businessmen that know nothing about education – it’s not just teachers that suffer from hubris – and it fundamentally amounts to a war on academia and it’s wrong.

                  I probably won’t have a job in a year or two because of it.

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                  1. Travis, I’m not going to get into the politics of this with you because, believe me, I know a heck of a lot more about Texas politics than you do as well as about the education system here. But I will say this: you are entitled to your opinion, just as everyone else is. However, until you have a kid going through the public school system here or anywhere else and have to explain to him why it isn’t bad to be male, you don’t have a good view of the system. I’d refer you to Sarah’s old live journal posts about what she had to go through with regard to her eldest son’s IB curriculum, but I have a feeling those pages have been purged in LJ’s latest round of housecleaning. (I could be wrong and Sarah can correct me). I’d say you were very lucky in the professors you had. But, as a conservative, I don’t condemn academia because it has liberals in it. Never have and never will. I will condemn it when those liberals — or conservatives or whomever — view their position within academia as giving them license to preach their beliefs as the only RIGHT way to think. Worse, they do punish those students who dare question those beliefs. But that has gotten us away from the point of the post, so I will leave it with this.

                    I am sorry you may lose your job. I understand that may have you a bit worried and defensive. It would me. But no one here has said everyone in academia is the bad guy. We have said there is a trend for certain things to happen. These are trends we have personally seen or experienced as either students, parents or workers in the system. Have generalizations been used? Sure, and that has been admitted. But that doesn’t make our observations any less valid.

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                    1. Now we’ve moved from Academia, a narrow segment of education, to ALL education becoming worthless, so the conversation is really off topic now and it keeps expanding. Before it gets to trade policy I’m going to shoot myself.

                      Everyone keeps saying that this is NOT about politics, but I beg to differ. You say you would condemn conservative examples equally but I haven’t seen any conservative examples. In all the examples mentioned in this discussion no one has mentioned some crazy class work about conservative ideologies, only the lib ones. So this all boils down to this. Academia is broken and the problem is we can’t trust these libs with our kids. That’s it. I’m here to tell people…calm down, it’s not as bad as you think. It can be fixed. Yes there is some weird worthless lib stuff going on out there in academia, but most of it is ok. Michelangelo’s and John Locke’s reputations are just fine and most of us are doing right by your kids.

                      And I just have to laugh. I find it HIGHLY improbable that after ten years of teaching (and more as a student) and over ten different institutions, some of the most historically liberal (in the sense of philosophy, not political leanings) institutions I managed to run into the only reasonable, intelligent and competent professors out there. I really do Amanda. They are not oddballs. They are pretty representative of the group and we are unfairly demonizing them.

                      For the record I have three kids in public school in TX, and I’ve seen some wacky crap, but my daughter’s science teacher is the best she’s ever had and she went to state last year in the science fair and she’s going back to regionals again this year.

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                  2. Travis,
                    We’ll split the difference. The kid’s humanities textbooks were revolting but when he wrote a paper disputing the colonialism view of poverty in the rest of the world, with examples and economic analysis, his professor not only gave him an A but lauded him to the sky.

                    I think you’re underestimating the amount of BS in SOME places — there’s A LOT here. OTOH it’s HERE. I can’t speak to the rest of the country. However, if you want to see what put me against schools — NOT AGAINST LEARNING. DO NOT CONFLATE THE TWO — search my blog for multi-culti and read the comments when my blog was invaded by #1 son’s IB classmates. One of those people posting illiterate illogical rants was the IB Valedictorian who went to an ivy league the next year. It’s not the opinions, though those hurt because they’re clearly not the result of thought. It’s the bad grammar and logic.

                    I also have to disagree with you on why you’re likely not to have a job. Oh, I don’t disagree that a lot of businessmen will know nothing about education. It’s like the MBAs running publishing. Those don’t help.

                    BUT what’s really hitting you is not that — it’s technology and also how bad the high schools have got (look for that post if you don’t believe me.) The high schools went down markedly HERE between one son and the next (3 years) due to an emphasis on administrators and cutting down on EXPERIENCED teachers (even for the gifted/advanced, they’re hiring people right out of college. They’re cheaper.) NOT all high schools. Younger kid is in an excellent one right now — though it might be the only one left in the state, if what I hear from friends is true — to which he transferred in his junior year. The high schools are particularly bad for boys. Most of the families I know the boys didn’t make it to college and most have a GED. (And yes, this has to do with emphasis and how things are taught.) Tech-class kids, okay? Mine are an exception because failure is NOT an option. However, those boys are going to find a way. And if they can’t get to the normal colleges, they’ll go around. This is JUST starting, but you’ll see it more and more in the next ten years.

                    That’s half of it. The other half of it is technology. I had to home school #2 son for a year, but it was not what I expected. Mostly I enrolled him in on line, interactive classes. They’re there, and they’ll only get better.

                    Mark has been blogging about how EVERY field is being hit by the tech revolution, music and writing and apparently design just felt it earlier. You’re about to be hit. From that perspective, your defensiveness makes perfect sense. I remember how I felt last year at this time, when I thought my field was being pulled out from under me. BUT what it took was a turn-around on my perspective. Consider the same. It’s not a loss, it’s an opportunity. I have no clue if you can teach on line, but you probably can. And hey, there’s always writing, which can be done around and on the side. I’ve seen enough of you to know you DO get it, so… get the mourning over with and use the years of security to setup for the new tech world. This is not a liberal conservative thing. It certainly isn’t an anti-intellectual thing (Travis, you’ve read me, right? HOW could I be anti-intellectual.) It’s a “The times they are achanging” — I’m not going to tell you it’s a good thing, but it COULD be, if you make it so.

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            2. Keep in mind that Sarah’s “you” was originally referring to the ones whining about Amazon.com’s Evil Business Tactics.

              I don’t think anyone is saying that Ivory Tower Liberals don’t know their own fields, aren’t smart and so forth. It’s the political leanings, and the denigation of a winning business plan that irritates some people.

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              1. But many of the art professors were businessmen and sold their own art or worked as designers. In fact, there was a kind of cognitive dissonance, because they were such resourceful entrepreneurs but were also adamantly progressive in their personal politics.

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                1. But that ain’t true either. These people had LOTS of practical knowledge and used it. There was often a disconnect between their private business and their politics, but they passed a lot of that practical knowledge on to me, so no, they are not clueless and not worthless.

                  My art history profs taught me more about networking and working a room than anyone I ever knew. Writing grants and getting money for your proposals is business acumen.

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            3. Travis;
              Hate to disagree with you, but you’re too young to appreciate. Not if you’ve only b een teachng for ten years.

              This is from personal experience and limited to a few thousand individuals everywhere on the globe and in most socio-economic strata. NOBODY — but NOOO body who has ENTERED high school since about 1975 or so has gotten a decent education, and nobody for the past century has gotten a good one. That includes maxima cum laude graduates of Ivy League schools.

              Education in Western Civilization — hell, say it right: in Christendom — has declined precipitously in quality since the end of the Nineteenth Century. And that decline has not been an accident. You may be a one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind, but you are NOT — not by comparison to your forebears — well-educated. Not unless you have taken an independent hand in your own education and largely thrown away — to paraphrase Paul Simon — all the crap you learned in high school.

              Those majoring in math and the sciences may experience somewhat different mileage, but not much. Not so long as the charlatans pushing Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming are holding down tenured positions at major institutions of higher learning and government scientific institutions and not on trial for epic fraud.

              Otherwise, the general low level of literacy, numeracy, historical knowledge, and understanding of fundamentals of science, technology and what used to be called mechanics is pathetic.

              And I do most assuredly include myself.

              M

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              1. Well it seems I’m the outlier here so I’ll stop kicking against the pricks.

                But people, before I go, dead serious here… you’re wrong. You’re just flat wrong. Most people still get a decent education in college, regardless of the existence of transgender studies programs. And frankly, do you realize how few of those kind of programs there really are? And how few students actually take them?! Liberal arts today are not all worthless victimology classes, they teach important distinctions of culture, judgment and taste. Most of what my fellow professors teach is still within the western canon. More classes are still being taught on Virgil than on Bob Dylan. People in academia aren’t dumb and clueless for the most part. If education has really been in such serious decline over the last thirty years, why has the growth of the economy been largest at exactly that same period?

                Now currently we have oversold its value and are in the middle of a higher education bubble, with tuition soaring and student debt reaching epidemic values, but that’s another issue. This war on academia will not end well. TX is in the middle of its purge and most of the people its killing off are good people who don’t deserve it. We (the country as a whole and not anyone here specifically) have really crossed over from a concern over the quality of the teaching and are approaching a mindless anti-intellectualism.

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                1. Um… If I didn’t think my kids weren’t getting a decent education I wouldn’t pay for it Travis. I haven’t read the other comments yet, so I don’t know what they were up to while I slept but — no issues with anti intellectualism afaic — my only issue — as in the post — is the lack of contact with business sense of MOST academics. OF COURSE those who are also artists (or anything else) are exempt from this. Look — I wasn’t aiming at you or anyone like you. I was aiming at the people I’ve known who think that the world should reflect the academia.

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              2. Mark,

                There are… pockets. I entered school in 76, and I got a decent education — though right now it’s hard to tell you what I was taught and what I learned on my own. But Dan got a decent education in Stow Ohio, a year before me. And so did I in my exchange year, though a lot of this was “heroic teachers” who would stay late, learn new things and stand ready to teach you whatever on their own time, at their own peril. Right now #2 son is going to a school like that too, and getting an excellent education. Remember, decay like uplift happens in pockets. Maybe Travis got lucky in school and in teaching, in which case we must seem like total loonies.

                HOWEVER, yes, even in Portugal the level of education is uh… not what it was. Mind you, I THINK the reason for it is small families and the “every kid must excel” as much as anything else. BUT that’s a whole post, or probably a series of them.

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                1. I went to a very good science and engineering university in the late 70’s and early 80’s, and while the Baby Boomers had already done a number on course requirements, I think I still got a pretty good education. (Now, the university graduates mostly social science majors and I’ve been hesitant to give it any money. :-P)

                  Contast this with watching a friend of mine getting her college degree as an adult in the 90s – it was what would have passed for a good high school degree in the 70s. I also got masters degree in the mid 2000s and my undergrad courses in the 70s were much harder – and it’s not because I’m older and things are easier, but my undergrad classes covered way more, in far more depth and required far more complex mathematics.

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    3. I have to agree with Martin. “need intrude” and “is forbidden to intrude” are different concepts entirely. The former implies that having a clue is optional; the latter that having one is impossible.

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  11. The curious part is that there simply has been no real effort to compete, despite the fact that Apple etc etc are in a good position to do so, and traditional publishers in an EXCELLENT position to do so. They have the contacts with authors they have a paper business as sweetener, they do still have some cachet and appearance of validation, the costs of setting up e-retail from their sites are tiny, and they could continue to sell from Amazon, and can offer a can’t be beat editing/cover/promotion (2 for one with big name authors for example) and great royalties (they could for example offer 80% royalties for sales off their site and say 50% from third party sites – which would make authors use their own marketing clout to push readers to the publisher’s website.) And as an author… to have them compete for my work and offer better deals… bring it on! I don’t see readers balking either.

    Yet, this, which is painfully obvious, just hasn’t even begun to happen.
    So WHY NOT?

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      3. They’re not all holding their breaths. Some of them are anxiously lobbying legislators, and others are organizing astroturf campaigns like the one that set you off this morning.

        Regards,
        Ric

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        1. I’m with Ric on this one. If they were holding their breaths i wouldn’t be worried. Instead they’re spending very serious money -money that would have paid for the best competitive effort 3 times over on lobbying for the likes of PIPA and also badmouth campaigns.

          It makes no sense unless the story is FAR larger than we think.

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  12. It’s funny because it’s true! Hear, hear! Brava! &c.

    *takes out her Progressive Authentication Wand* Someone said they prefer ‘gatekeepers’ to democratization and still dares to call themselves “progressives?” Bring them here. They have a smackdown coming…

    Just one opinion from a progressive who has a modicum of common sense:

    One of the reasons I ran, and didn’t walk, away from academia is the whole fallacy that art and commerce can’t co-habitate. Um, hello, they’ve been in bed together since pre-Biblical times, and they appear to get on quite well.

    Yes, in the days of great benefactors and diseases that made living past 50 a miracle, artists could create for the general benefit society (more or less). People can and do still do this. But many of us cannot carry on two (or four) jobs indefinitely without the strain overwhelming us. We have to pay for insurance and the mortgage. We have to eat. We, in turn, also need art as entertainment to make life worth living, and that requires a healthy stream of work from full-time creative minds.

    There are two variations of this abhorrence of commercial art: the faux-liberal who’s really just a liberal arts dilettante and thinks genre fiction is beneath him, and the neo-Marxist still learning the difference between ideals and reality, who thinks all art should be free and artists should get “real” jobs.

    (I really don’t want either of them on my side.)

    Sure, there are legitimate concerns that I have about Amazon, but I have legitimate concerns about any company that represents more than 30 people. The nature of a corporation is to be self-serving (= make a profit), and living in a capitalist society, everyone needs to acknowledge that and proceed accordingly. I look after myself first, and I went into business with Amazon and B&N with both eyes open. Therefore, I will have other options ready if they present problems to my business model in the future.

    Why are people running around defending big publishers that sold out to huge corporate conglomerates years ago and consolidated all of their power accordingly? They’re reaping their just rewards for being beholden to unrealistic profit margin expectations. People should see the digital revolution as a chance to innovate, to restructure and throw off the shackles of print limitations, to allow for the democratization of creative entrepreneurship. Instead, old school talking heads are running around like chickens whose heads were just chopped off, and it’s more sad than funny, because everyone has been warning them about what was coming FOR YEARS.

    Amazon is not the enemy here. A lack of perspective is.

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    1. I think they mispell “RE”gressives. Honestly. And I don’t have any problems with academia and commerce cohabiting. It’s just the “ivory tower” people who do. They act like if you’re making money outside the world of academia you “sold out.” It’s why I ran too. And actually at least in writing, the mode necessary for making it in academia (You know “good” being determined by someone else, striving to satisfy external forces, etc) TRULY militates against GOOD writing and against a business like attitude to your career.

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      1. Catering to the ignorant masses who can’t appreciate the skills of a true artist really sucks. Much easier to have a patron, or better yet: a “patron by proxy” whereby you and friends sit on grant and award authorizing boards and scratch each others’ backs. When corporate executive do this on corporate boards of directors, of course, it is proof of how corrupt capitalism is.

        On another topic, it is sad how folk muck up a market’s effective functioning with excessive regulation, then decide the solution to ineffective markets is additional regulation.

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  13. Sarah, you didn’t get quite enough letters in there: it’s RETROgressive.

    If you drill down through Populism, “social justice”, the Leninist pseudo-Marxism that’s current, true Marxism, and the Church doctrines that gave rise to all that, you come up with the mores of the hunter-gatherer: resources exist or not, and the hunter who finds some and doesn’t share is a Bad Guy. That’s going to be everyone’s emotional response, because that’s the environment we evolved in. Industrial capitalism is an intellectual behavior-set that contradicts our emotional “instincts”. People who are “agin it” are longing for the Good Old Days of bounding naked through the veldt, competing with hyenas for fresh lion kills. They have a lot of intricate rationalizations for that, and a goodly number take those seriously, but that’s what they’re after.

    And yes, RES. “Regulation” is necessary and sufficient to create “crony capitalism” — everybody sucks up to the people who control their environment, at some level. One of the amusing things about the Occupy movement is their demand that the problem be solved using the measures that created it in the first place, taken to extremes.

    Regards,
    Ric

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  14. Travis, you seem determined to keep arguing and I don’t want to. Nor do I want to turn this into a political debate. That isn’t the purpose of Sarah’s blog or of this post — as her comment to you this morning shows. However, go back and read my comments. I do NOT condemn all of education. I do NOT mock it all. Nor do I say all professors are evil or bad. If I did, I wouldn’t a string of initials after my name. In fact, before you start saying everyone answering you feels this way, you might find out how many of us do have Masters and Doctorates, some of us multiple times. You might also be surprised to find out how many of us are or have been teachers or professors. So get off your soapbox, get rid of the chip on your shoulder and read what we are saying with the same open mind you want us to read your comments. Believe me, there is no one here who values a good education more than myself. There is no one who respects teachers more than me. But they have to teach — and many do — and not just spout political or social ideas and expect them to be blindly accepted.

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    1. Kate, I do not believe I EVER resorted to an any ad hominem attack and I resent that implication. I did not ever intentionally insult anyone. If I unintentionally insulted someone I apologize for my language or lack of tact, Instead I simply disagreed. I do believe that there is an unavoidable political dimension to this. Attempts to say otherwise are fruitless and I said so. That too is a disagreement not an insult. Also I believe the generalities are precisely the problem, which is why I returned with specifics.

      The conversation has been broad ranging, from the lack of business experience in academia to the indoctrination of students in academia, to the value and quality of general education in high school. That’s a lot of territory and a lot of generalizations were made.

      It’s just that my experience has been decidedly different than Amanda’s or Sarah’s. The vast majority of professors I have had have been remarkably decent, despite disagreeing with my personal, moral or political beliefs.
      I just think people are too casual when categorizing people in academia or the academia in general and it’s dangerous because it’s leading to an unthinking anti-intellectualism.

      I did not mean to troll this board. My apologies. I’ve said my peace.

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      1. Travis,

        I think maybe the misunderstanding was a typo. I believe you meant “kicking against the bricks” upthread; but, ummm, that wasn’t what you typed…

        Aside from that, you’ve been civil and moderate, and you’ve made me think.

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        2. It was a paraphrase of what Christ said to Saul (later Paul) on the road to Damascus. Which was, interestingly, possibly a paraphrase of a line from a play that was contemporary to the event.

          At any event, “prick” is not always scatalogical. A spur is a ‘prick’. Check out “Faerie Queen”s first line :-)

          Carry on :-)

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      2. Travis,

        Mea culpa. I misread your comment that it’s not good that many of the conservative-minded decide against grad school because they perceive it as unfriendly as implying that conservative-minded folks can’t cut it at grad-school level. I withdraw the comment about ad hominem.

        Generalizations are good for highlighting trends and the predictive abilities that go with that. They’re very bad at the individual level. All abstractions work that way: you gain power but lose definition.

        I think that the anti-intellectualism you’re talking about is actually aimed against the plethora of MBAs (you should hear my husband about this… makes me sound like a sweet little purring kitten) and those who think their credentials make them experts in fields they’ve never studied.

        None of which is relevant to the “Amazon is Eeeeevile!” screams – which is a different level of people acting like sheep.

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    2. Amanda, I’m not surprised at all. And no where did I say that anyone here does not value education. It’s just that we are not talking about education in the abstract, but the current state of education which is embodied by the academy and has been turned, unfairly I believe, into something of a bogeyman.

      I actually think we agree more than disagree. I think this is a percentage thing.

      We both agree that there is unfair indoctrination and politicization of the academy with a fair share of incompetence. We both would like to see improvements in that situation. We both agree on the value in theory, of higher education and that there are good teachers out there.

      But I would guess that if you had to determine the over/under on it, you would say that it is more bad than good. (correct me if I’m wrong) I’m saying, it’s more good than bad and that we are fixating on the bad. That skews the perspective and causes problems especially in our approach on how to fix it.

      That’s all I’m saying. As most are on the “more bad than good” side, I feel compelled, and I admit I’m defensive about it, to give some pushback. Not trying to be a troll.

      Sorry.

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  15. Travis,

    “Creation science” and “intelligent design”. There. I’ve mentioned fruitcake conservative educational theory. Happy now?

    A few observations for you. First, if you are incapable of distinguishing between broad generalizations of an observable trend (to which there may be many exceptions including you) and your existence as an exception to said trend, you should not be teaching at any level, much less college. That used to be basic teaching at elementary school level. Obviously it isn’t now and hasn’t been for a while, since you don’t appear to miss it.

    Second, the world of Academia is notorious for the ivory tower effect where a whole cluster of like-minded individuals are echoing and building on each other’s ideas without said ideas ever needing to be tested in the real world. Worse, there’s a tendency – especially if money is contingent on the results – to dismiss any real world evidence that doesn’t meet the theory.

    Third, you didn’t take long to resort to ad hominem when your views were challenged with evidence and opinions to the contrary. I’m one of the less credentialled here, with two bachelors and two graduate degrees. Also, assuming that absence of graduate degree means inability to deal with the overwhelming left-liberal lean of academia (which you agree exists – did it ever occur to you that with such an overwhelming unity of basic ideology there will inevitably be distortion?) is equally intolerant – some people have no tolerance for the administrivia that goes along with a degree, others feel they have better uses for their money, and still others have never had the money to take a degree. That doesn’t make any of them intolerant no matter what you think or imply.

    Finally, you’re welcome to disagree with Sarah’s conclusions as much as you please. You crossed the line when you started insulting people and using flawed if not outright fallacious reasoning without even discussing the actual topic at hand.

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  16. Pingback: Bleating Against Amazon | The Passive Voice

  17. Hey, Sarah. I am, I am sure, what you would call a sheep. And I think government is not all bad, and has every right to interfere with Amazon in one important regard: labor rights. Amazon is an extremely wealthy and successful corporation, and, as such, it should treat its workers well. From all I’ve heard, it doesn’t. If I choose not to support a company that abuses its workers, that’s my right as an American.

    One more thing: Amazon was the LAST e-reader manufacturer to allow libraries to lend books in its proprietary format. The last. By many, many months.

    And that’s why I no longer love Amazon as much as I once did.

    As I said elsewhere, Amazon does not care about books, libraries, readers or writers. Amazon is a company, and it cares about one thing – money.

    My two cents.

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    1. Oh, please! WHAT else should Amazon care about? It’s in the business to make money. It doesn’t make money it goes under and stops existing. Businesses are not a form of welfare. And NO we don’t need government mucking up business. It’s your right to do whatever you want. However, I suggest that if you want government to interfere with business you should try ANYWHERE ELSE in the world, where government does. Heavily. As for not treating its workers well… are they indentured? If not they can get jobs elsewhere. Sheesh.

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    2. Oh, and do you love traditional publishers? Because they treat their employers AND their suppliers with tender loving care, I’m sure. http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2012/02/do-legacy-publishers-treat-authors.html Yes, you are being a sheep. Taking down Amazon will ONLY benefit the traditional publishers. You want to create a business that gives its employees EVERYTHING and does better than Amazon, do.

      (GRUMBLE — what in heck does “wealthy corporation” mean? Corporations pay out to shareholders. Most shareholders for MOST corporations are things like retirement funds. “Wealthy” in this context is an empty signifier. PLEASE learn business.)

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      1. Yup, the majority of shareholders in the US are retirement funds and insurance companies. So if you have a 401K or IRA and insurance coverage, you are a greedy corporate owner (and your money is being taxed at the corporate level of 35% before it even reaches you).

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        1. Ayup – corporations that pay regular dividends (dividends reduced, as noted, by government taxes on corporate earnings) have traditionally been the darling of pensions, annuities and insurance companies, providing steady return on investment and predictable cash flows, allowing predictability of resources for future requirements. Such investments have long been known as “widows & orphans” funds.

          Using the standards promulgated by our intellectual and moral superiors (just ask them) on the Left (ahem: don’t think the government has the constitutional right to require benefits for employees? You must want to steal ladyparts and keep women barefoot and preggers and in chastity belts!) the appropriate response to demands for higher corporate taxes must be: Why do you want widows and orphans to starve?

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    3. Mary, why the, “As I said elsewhere” line? Are you gathering up all your posted comments to give to someone else? What’s the going rate? I think all of us could use some extra money.

      And you seem to differentiate between corporations that are successful (bad old “wealthy corporations”) and, what? *Failed* corporations that can’t make money for their stockholders and have to be bailed out by the government? Those are the good ones?

      But, most importantly, “Mary” – could you please provide some statistics to back up your claim that Amazon is mistreating its employees? You know, websites, government studies — *facts* of any kind, to be blunt. Because you simply can not go around making these assertions without supporting them — unless whoever is paying you by the post doesn’t care, as long as you smear Amazon.

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    4. mary, mary,

      Where was labor rights mentioned? I’ve certainly never seen it in any of the Amazon is Teh Eville! screeds.

      I’m not sure where you’re elsewhere is – further up in the comment where you claim Amazon is mistreating its employees? – assuming this, you’re making a pretty common mistake here. You’re assuming that companies care only about money. They don’t. They care about making sure the money keeps coming in year after year after year. The ones that only care about money right now are busy selling off the farm, laying off employees in every direction, and in the publishing industry, burning their feedstock (new authors). For the long term you dedicate a good chunk of your income to investing in future endeavors, which includes (whodathunkit?) your employees.

      Amazon’s core business is helping people buy stuff they want, and getting said stuff to them. They started with books and expanded. Ultimately if people can’t find what they want to buy on Amazon, Amazon will fail. Writers provide product. It’s a simple business agreement. Libraries are customers. So are readers. As long as customers keep buying Amazon is happy.

      If you don’t like it, feel free to get some friends together and start up a competitor. You can even get yourself some funding and talk your investors into running at a loss for several years while you get established, just like Amazon did.

      Otherwise, business is business. Amazon doesn’t have a lifetime non-compete we own all your books forever clause – unlike some publishers (and to their shame, agencies) do. I know which I’d rather deal with.

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    5. Hmm. Mary – I’d love to hear what you thought of traditional publishing and traditional retail – who took around 94% from books – meaning the producers got paid so far below minimum wage as to make those working sweatshops in Vietnam well off. And government was very noisy about that too, despite the fact that publishing and retail book chains were de facto a cartel.

      At a certain level I agree with you: ideally the purpose of government is to allow weak individuals to resist the power of the wealthy/powerful, thus preventing dictatorship. Unfortunately the first act of the wealthy and powerful is to subvert government to work for them, instead of the people. So when you stop media corporates (publishing is a small part of these) from lobbying and funding political parties, then government might function more closely to the ideal. (declaration which has nothing to do US politics – I hope Sarah will forgive me – I believe any donation/contribution to ANY political party, beyond a small not to be exceeded by anyone membership fee, should be considered as bribery and see you in the next cell to the lobbyists – who should be doing life. Yes. I am a hairy eyed lunatic.)

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  19. Martin (and Mary). I’m sorry if it seemed I was hitting or something. But there’s this weird pattern that I’ve been noticing in the blogs, of strangers coming in, making unsupported statements (and referring to having said the same thing elsewhere, as though people were following them from blog to blog) and then disappearing, and “Mary” fit the pattern exactly.

    If I have mischaracterized “Mary” I’m really sorry. I would still, however, like to know where the information is that Amazon treats its employees so badly. But that’s just the kind of person I am :-)

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    1. Lin, I have no evidence (as if that ever stops baseless accusation) but I believe Amazon forces their employees to work assigned shifts, maintain assigned productivity goals and treat customers as if their desires (rather than what the employee desires) matter. Further, i suspect they encourage their employees to seek as individuals to better themselves and enhance their contribution to the business which pays them.

      I wouldn’t even be surprised if Amazon feels no compulsion to pay their workers a “living wage” without regard to the economic value of their contribution to the company, and may even go so far as to search for ways to enhance productivity even if it means fewer employees working there.

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  20. “I’m not going to deny that Amazon is an 800 lb gorilla or that Amazon is a corporation. Of course that last, for most of you, is enough to consider them eeeeeevil. That is because most of you are either college students or are living like college students in your parents’ basement, from stolen cheetos.”

    I need this embroidered on a sampler on my wall. Surrounded by rainbows and pink bunnies. :-)

    You are a goddess. And you know some very eloquent fishwives. :-)

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  21. Sarah, I have no problem with the basic tenet of this blog, namely, “If you don’t like Amazon, then go ahead and compete with it.”

    But I was surprised and puzzled by the disparaging comments about liberals and academics. I’m a liberal in Canada, where it might not have the same pejorative meaning. What’s wrong with being a liberal? Why should it interfere with common sense or the ability to work with your hands? Surely people realize that saying “All liberals are X and Y” is just as wrong as saying “All conservatives are C and D.”

    As for academics, I don’t work at a university, but as a physician, I have done my time in the salt mines of education. I love and celebrate good teachers at all levels of education, from preschool to professors.

    I don’t think this has anything to do with Amazon, but I wanted to put in my two cents: pom poms for liberals and teachers!

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    1. mel, the problem here in the States is that all the real Liberals (proponents of Classical Liberalism, with its elevation of the Individual against the authoritarian coercive power of the Collective (whether in the form of Church, State or other concentration of power) are on the Right, while those posing as Liberals are (as they are now generally acknowledging) Progressives, endorsing the Marxist vision of History as a progression toward an all powerful State, acting on behalf of its citizens (or, as has been demonstrated in numerous real world laboratories, on behalf of those who run the State.)

      As a physician you are surely that to name a thing is not the same as identifying what it is.

      As for teachers, we all “love and celebrate” good teachers. Problem is, a) the unions treat mediocre and bad teachers the same as good ones and b) the system in the US is designed to discourage good teachers if only because their capabilities are constrained by mandated requirements that they adhere to scope & sequence mandated by a distant power, with relatively little authority to adjust to the actual abilities of their students.

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    2. UH? I wasn’t making any disparaging comments on liberals and teachers. I was making disparaging comments on SOME liberal ARTS (ie you might call them HUMANITIES?) teachers, who have no clue what money is for. Travis took it out of context because he thought he was being attacked. If you don’t know this, the tenure track here allows for “crazy” humanities teaching — my kids’ economics book, for instance, is insane. They seem to think it’s all about “hiring the person most in need” — which it CAN be, when you CAN, but often, you know, you can’t, and your job is to keep business afloat first. In fact, refer to comment from self-described liberal (More hard core “progressive”) who GOT it.

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    3. Melissa, unfortunately the comments have drifted a long way from the original post. The post was not an attack on liberals or academics. It did point out some deficiencies in some of them. However, I can assure you that among the things Sarah values, the freedom to think and believe as you want, without state interference ranks high on the list. So do those educators who teach our kids how to think, to reason and search out answers. What she was talking about in this post was how those who are proclaiming at the tops of their voices the evilness of Amazon are often those who either want to see more government involvement in our lives and in business, OR those who simply have no grasp of how real world economics work.

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      1. Okay! I know the post was about Amazon, not liberals and teachers. That’s why I was commenting on the comments.

        I didn’t realize that American “Liberals” are the opposite of me, though. For teachers, I do know that any system based on seniority can lead to stagnation, but also that good teachers get job security that way, too. Anyway, I’m not trying to stir up a political debate. Thanks for clarifying.

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        1. Melissa,
          It was just Travis’ (Pats Travis) panic attack. He is where I was re: my career until I figured out I could go indie. Tech is scaring everyone and changing the world so fast most of us panic before we think — if we think the results actually tend to be good for us. I’ll do another post on that soon. I make it a policy of NOT banning/deleting people or stopping discussions going off base because it often inspires me with future posts. If you look back you’ll find far odder discussions in comments…

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  22. I don’t want to dip my toe into the political waters here, because the current seems really strong and I’d just get swept out with it, but I would like to put in my two cents re: Amazon. Personally, I don’t like them. I don’t like them because they try to short-change authors for their own gain with programs like KDP Select, because they try to keep everything you buy on an over-hyped “cloud” (e.g. you pay for it, but they control it), and because they’re now trying to establish themselves as one of the traditional publishers from whom they originally provided a means of escape.

    However, no matter how much I dislike them, they are (a) my primary means of acquiring my Cheetos as a self-published author, and (b) free to do whatever they please, within the limits of morality and anti-trust law. Nobody who stops and thinks about it should want the government to put their fingers where they don’t belong. I don’t care whether you’re a liberal or a conservative or an independent socialist libertarian; your position should be consistent. If you’re going to say “hands off” about abortion or gay marriage or any other touchy issue, you can’t turn around and say “fix it all!” because you don’t like a particular corporation (and vice versa for the other side of the spectrum).

    I won’t say anything about indoctrination in the schools, because while Sarah was kicked off the rugby team for “roughness,” I hovered on the sidelines and cringed whenever the ball came at me. However, I do want to point out that the message of “corporation bad, little man good” is so deeply ingrained in our culture that even home-schooled kids would get the message by simply turning on the TV. Take any Disney movie off the shelf, or open literally any mass trade paperback, and pinpoint the villain. The one trait they will /always/ have (besides being overtly carnal, and scantily clad if female) is Power. The popular cheerleader is a bully, the big scary factory is going to mow down the farms, the franchise is trying to buy out Mom ‘n Pop and Jimmy has to win a cookie-baking competition to save the day.

    I’d be wiling to bet that even the authors who decry the sheep-like Marxism of the youths are prone to making their villains powerful royals whose excesses must be stopped by the plucky hero/heroine. With a hundred plus years of of riffing on this theme, is it surprising that the public jumps on anyone who carries the faint scent of Power? It’s plain old Robin Hood syndrome, only in reality it’s a lot easier to post pithy Tweets about how much we hate the Sheriff of Nottingham than to take up bows and arrows ourselves.

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    2. T.K. Marnell, I have read your post several times now and still wonder if we are living on the same planet. So, let’s take your comments one at a time:

      re: Amazon. Personally, I don’t like them. I don’t like them because they try to short-change authors for their own gain with programs like KDP Select
      WTF? How are they trying to short-change authors with the KDP Select Program? Do they force an author to enroll in the program? No. Do they tell us that if we don’t enroll in the program, we can’t sell other titles with them? No. The KDP Select Program is optional. An author makes the choice to enroll in it and, in doing so, to take that particular title off sale elsewhere. No other titles are involved. As for payment, that’s pretty upfront too. More than that, it is the one way a self-published author or small press can offer their titles for free for a limited time for promotion — in other words, the control is in our hands as authors. We decide when and if a title goes into the program, when and if it is put up for free, etc.

      because they try to keep everything you buy on an over-hyped “cloud” (e.g. you pay for it, but they control it)
      Ooookay, before we go any further, I suggest you review how the legacy publishers view e-books. THEY AREN’T BOOKS to them. According to them, all we are doing is purchasing a license to read the book. As for Amazon keeping everything in the cloud, nope. Sorry, wrong again. It goes on the cloud only if you choose for it to. Otherwise, you download it to your Kindle, your computer, your smartphone or tablet. Now a question for you: why aren’t you railing against BN or Apple or Sony or any of the others that “control” your e-books? Look, there’s this handy dandy little thing called “backing up your data”. It applies to your e-books as well.

      they’re now trying to establish themselves as one of the traditional publishers from whom they originally provided a means of escape.
      Sigh. Again, no. What they are doing is providing an alternative to the legacy publishers. You say you are a self-published author. I guaran-damn-tee you that three years ago you wouldn’t have been able to self-publish your books to Amazon, or BN or any of the others. You would have been banished as a hack to the likes of Smashwords and Fictionwise, and with Fictionwise you had to prove you had a catalog worth their effort in putting your books up for sale. I guarantee you also that, while Amazon has made and will continue to make mistakes, they won’t repeat the ones that have led to the sad state of traditional publishing today.

      I don’t want to dip my toe into the political waters here,
      Wow, great opening statement. Too bad you didn’t follow through. Your entire second paragraph is nothing but politics. Same with the subsequent paragraphs.

      I’d be wiling to bet that even the authors who decry the sheep-like Marxism of the youths are prone to making their villains powerful royals whose excesses must be stopped by the plucky hero/heroine.
      OMFG, get a life, grow up and get over yourself. No, most of the authors who decry this make their villains appropriate to the story. At least the good authors do. Would you like it if I made the comment that every marxist youth who thinks himself a writer makes their villains the evil corporate executive or man of religion? Or, better yet, their hero is the unemployed, perpetual student who never even tries to live in the real world?

      One final question. If you are so convinced Amazon is evil and doing its best to rip you off, as an author off, why are you with them? There are alternatives out there. Instead of sullying yourself by consorting with “the enemy”, go find some company you think is better and then do your best to promote them.

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      1. Wow. That’s a lot of pent up hostility there. If you’ve really read my post several times, one would think you’d get beyond the first paragraph before you cement your preconceptions of what you think I’m trying to say.

        (a) The KDP Select program rips authors off because it’s exclusive, and it pays a fraction of what you could earn with independent sales elsewhere (if you’re lucky enough to get a share at all). However, by choosing not to participate, you are forced to compete with all of the authors who put their stuff up for “free,” and what customer would browse through books they have to pay for when they have a whole “library” to choose from? So yes, the program rips off both authors who participate and those who do not.

        (b) I am fully aware of how to guard my own purchases and data, but the problem is that most other people aren’t. They will simply trust Amazon and use the cloud because the Kindle devices have very limited storage and it doesn’t occur to them to protect themselves.

        (c) I don’t bother to rail against Apple because I don’t use their products for a multitude of reasons that have more to do with principle than business sense. I’d eat glass before I put any of my books in the iBookstore. But of course I had no reason to say this, because Sarah’s post and the ensuing discussion was specifically about Amazon, not Apple or B&N. Should I start ticking off my reasons for refusing to shop at Walmart as well, just to demonstrate how impartial I am?

        (d) I don’t care what you say about Marxist youths, because I’m not one of them. What? A moderate who dislikes precious Amazon? What’s next? A crazy atheist who dislikes Darwin? A Christian who supports gay marriage? What is this world coming to?

        Regarding growing up, I am trying, but it’s slow going. At least I take solace in the knowledge that I’ve grown up enough to defend my position without the need to say “OMFG, get a life, grow up and get over yourself.” High school was so six years ago.

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        1. T. K. Marnell,

          You said:(a) The KDP Select program rips authors off because it’s exclusive, and it pays a fraction of what you could earn with independent sales elsewhere (if you’re lucky enough to get a share at all).

          Wrong. The KDP Select Program is something authors opt into. It would only be a rip-off if authors were forced into it. They aren’t. Go back and read the terms.

          Second wrong, it doesn’t pay a fraction of what you could earn with independent sales elsewhere. I don’t know about your sales, but mine are fractional everywhere else. Amazon is my main sales platform and the few sales I lost by moving my titles exclusively to Amazon have been made up for more than 100 fold. If, however, you are talking about the share of the lending library pool, again, you are at least partially wrong. My last sales report from Amazon showed that I made more for the title that was in the program (per transaction) at that point on loans than I made per transaction for sales. The key seems to be how much you have your book or short story priced at. But again, it is a voluntary program no one is forcing you to go into.

          You said: However, by choosing not to participate, you are forced to compete with all of the authors who put their stuff up for “free,” and what customer would browse through books they have to pay for when they have a whole “library” to choose from? So yes, the program rips off both authors who participate and those who do not.

          Again, wrong. All you have to do is visit the kindle boards, both on Amazon and on other sites, to see that there are a number of reader who do not, never have and never will, download a free ebook. But let’s look at this from the other side: how many people browse through the thousands and thousands of books for sale to find an “indie” book? How do you get your for pay book noticed among all the thousands, nay millions of books, already listed on Amazon?

          The KDP Program isn’t perfect and I’m the first to admit it. However, it is a means of promotion self-published authors and small publishers didn’t have before. It is up to authors and publishers to determine, based on their own data, if it is something they want to risk or not. It is, in many ways, evening the playing field for us in that we can now do what the “real” publishers have been able to–we can offer our titles for free for a short period of time to help drive sales. It is a tool we can choose to use or not.

          As for your comments about the so-called shortcomings of the Cloud and the limited storage capacity of the kindle, gee, that applies to all the other e-readers out there. So it isn’t unique unto Amazon. And I think you are selling short a lot of folks who read e-books. Most of the ones I know do back up their data, having learned the hard way on their computers the problems inherent in not doing so.

          As for your comment about Marxist youths, I was responding to your own comment and, gee, you didn’t respond to mine. Nor did you tell me why you are still using Amazon if it is so bad. As for your initial comment about the hostility, it’s not hostility. It’s frustration with all those who jump on the evil Amazon bandwagon without really looking at the whole picture. Amazon isn’t perfect. Far from it. But it isn’t the basis of all problems in publishing.

          Let me ask you this as well? Are you are up in arms about Random House raising the prices of their ebooks for libraries as much as 300%? Or about the other publishers refusing to offer their ebooks to libraries? Or is Amazon the only bugaboo in publishing these days?

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      2. Although saving it to the Kindle doesn’t prevent it from being ripped away by Amazon. Anyone remember the 1984 incident back in 2009? :)

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        1. yes, we do. And note they NEVER did it again. It was actually a matter of the person who put it up NOT having the right to sell it. Again, Amazon had to take it away. Yes, I realize the optics sucked.

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          1. Sarah, if you insisting on using facts there won’t be any arguments, just folks befooling themselves.

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              1. Well, you understand the progression. Somebody uses facts, then people try employing reason, then logic and then where are we?

                Of course, if somebody else starts making up their own facts, and somebody denounces reason and logic as tools of the patriarchy we still have a chance for a nice knock-down argument – there’s glory for you!

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  23. Belatedly, and to be fair to the earlier claims of, “Amazon treats its employees badly”, if you google “amazon poor treatment employees” it’ll turn up several articles (some of which are behind pay walls). But then it goes back to Amazon at least trying to fix things:

    http://thenextweb.com/insider/2011/09/21/amazon-responds-to-complaints-about-poor-working-conditions-in-warehouses/

    Which no one seems to remember when they lay these claims. But, hey, maybe it’s all smoke and mirrors on Amazon’s part too. I have no idea.

    PS: Avoiding politics, though the discussion has been very interesting. And had no reason to respond yesterday with a post that would have essentially been, “thumbs up!” – but since I did have something to contribute, I thought I’d toss the link in and a note on how to find more information behind claims of “Amazon is evil because of the way it treats its employees.”

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  24. For those still wondering what “Mary” (‘way up there) is all about, I urge you to look up an outfit called Odesk or oDesk. The “o” is for “optimization”, as in “search engine optimization”. Their goal is to game Google and the other search engines by exploiting the fundamental principle of their operation, i.e., the frequency of mention of a particular subject and its association with particular Web sites. The method is having an army of people producing comments and articles submitted to sites that accept them, containing key words and phrases associated with the Web site a particular customer is trying to promote. Their rates of payment to the army thus recruited are such that a person who does nothing all day but follow their methods can earn about half minimum wage, so most of their recruits are from places where English is relatively common and Internet access is available, but which are so economically backward that $2-3 an hour or roughly $20-50 a day is a survivable income: India, of course, but also the Philippines, South Africa and neighboring countries, the urban areas of South and Central America, and (perhaps surprisingly) Southeast Asia — the English (sub)-literacy rate in Viet Nam, Laos, and Thailand is much higher than most suppose, and of course there’s always Singapore.

    They are by no means the only ones doing that. oDesk itself is relatively benign (or, perhaps better, less than effective) but the overall structure is repeated elsewhere for other purposes, in particular “astroturf” campaigns. A modern, well-constructed astroturf campaign is not particularly designed to convince or even influence the direction of any particular Web site or discussion area; its goal is to raise the visibility of the issue so that a search on, e.g., “Amazon worker mistreatment” will return lots of hits, at least some of which will lead to the sites where that particular “issue” is being discussed on terms favorable to the astroturfer.

    Political astroturfing pays much better than commercial “search engine optimization”, largely because the latter is an r-strategy: the vast majority of the posts thus created are immediately discarded as spam by the site holders, but inattentive managers result in enough of them surviving to be discovered by the searchbots. It follows that correct English composition is strictly optional — the only thing that really matters is that the keywords are associated with the Web sites being promoted. Astroturfing requires that the posts survive and actually be discussed in at least some of the venues being utilized, so they must be well enough composed that native English speakers don’t simply ignore them. “Mary” might well have gotten fifty cents or even a dollar for “her” post, above, and the outfit she works for will have metrics (themselves crawlers or “bots”) that will add points to her rating because “her” post did, in fact, attract some discussion; “she” will thus maintain or increase her ability to earn by drive-by trolling.

    It is, or should be, an axiom that there are downsides to everything. This is one of the downsides to widely available Internet access without credentials or authentication.

    Regards,
    Ric

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    1. Oh, from Mother Jones. A BASTION of unbiased journalism. Thanks. This tells us which side the attacks are coming from. Always useful to know.

      And the workers are indentured, OF COURSE. Or perhaps owned? So, by law, they can’t move on and look for another job. So sad. So we should end slavery and indenture… in other countries, since here we don’t happen to have it.

      I suggest you stop trying to control other people. You’ll live better and you won’t give me ulcers.

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    2. Oh my, an article from MJ. And it is so chocked full of facts. Even verifiable facts. Sorry, but it sounds like a lot of warehouses out there. Are they great jobs? No, not often. But they are jobs and no one is being forced to work there. Besides, what does this have to do with the original topic?

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    3. Patrick A,

      Gosh. You really came trolling for an argument, didn’t you? It took me all of 5 minutes searching to find a range of comments from Amazon employees that make it pretty clear Amazon is a – horror of horrors – big company and working conditions vary depending on the quality of the local management, whether the employer is actually Amazon or one of their subcontractors, exactly which contractor, and a few other things such as the item that came up first in a search on amazon working conditions – warehouses in NE USA aren’t routinely air-conditioned (I live in this part of the world. Installing AC for what is realistically a few days a year that actually need it is not something a sane company will do – but I guarantdamntee you those warehouses have central heat.

      One bad report from an avowedly political source without evidence from all directions does not evidence make.

      This blog is frequented by a fair few actual scientists of the sort who have to defend their sources as well as their reasoning. This software tester doesn’t take kindly to specious so-called evidence, so I rather doubt the scientists and engineers will be as forgiving as this.

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  26. Someone asked for any sources that claim Amazon isn’t a workers’ paradise. I just gave you one. Can I provide more? Yes, I can. However, I’m neither your teacher, researcher, nor nanny, all jobs for which someone is paid. If you care about the topic, rather than spouting platitudes about the free market you’re welcome to look them up yourself. I’d be happy to read anything that contradicts the article and elevates the debate.

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    1. Someone asked for any sources that claim Amazon isn’t a workers’ paradise.

      Bull – no such request would be made (except sarcastically) because the only “workers’ paradises” occur in communist states. All statements following that opening constitute codswallop, discredited by the bad faith opening. Begone, foul troll.

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    2. So, you give one article from a source with an agenda….wow, thanks. But, as you just pointed out that you aren’t our teacher, researcher or nanny, neither are we yours. But perhaps you need one since a little disagreement makes you start calling names, or at brings the impression that you are calling names. The link you posted was from what can, at best, be called a biased source. I don’t know about you, but I’ve worked in warehouses and visited many more. Most of them aren’t fun to work in and, yes, there are productivity requirements that have to be met if you want to keep your job. Believe me, if things were systematically that bad not only would all those decrying Amazon right now be using it to try to score points, but the government would be stepping in to stop the “abuse”.

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  27. It’s possible that “workers’ paradise” might have had a whiff of sarcasm around it. But please, don’t strain yourself. (Communist states! Horrors!)

    Second, I never called anyone a name, though I’ve been called at least one and accused of a few more. And I never asked for you to be my teacher, researcher or nanny, thanks. I’m quite capable of doing that for myself. I did offer you the opportunity to change my mind; I don’t expect any such offer in return.

    Finally, Amanda, based on your championing of data to back up any and all statements, I suggest you look into the daily high temperatures for the months between May and September in the Northeast. “A few days” it is not. However, if it’s really that bad, you’re right, the government will likely step in to regulate the environment in order to bring about more safe and humane working environment. Which is exactly what they should do in such cases. I’m glad that on that point we can agree.

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    1. Patrick, please go back and read your initial comment. YOU are the one who said you weren’t my/our teacher, researcher or nanny. That one statement implied that you felt a nanny was needed. Why else bring it up?

      As for straining myself, you aren’t worth it. You come in and do a couple of drive by troll posts and that’s it. If you notice, most of us are very open here about who we are and are upfront about how we can be contacted. Doubt me on that, simply click on our names and you will be taken to a blog or a web page, etc. But you, nah. You hide behind a single last initial and no live link. That leaves you open to question as to whether you are one of those who simply come to a blog and post to earn money.

      Okay, it was hot. Hell, I live it Texas. I’ve worked in warehouses down here. Miserable in the summer and lousy in the winter. You dress for the job. Or you don’t go in. Most of those working in these warehouses, as the MJ article states (iirc) are temp workers. Guess what. They can get other temp jobs.

      And I repeat, if this was a systemic problem with Amazon, I think folks with the power to do something would. As for your “whiff of sarcasm” and “Communist states! Horrors”, grow up. get over yourself. Maybe you ought to go to all those blogs currently shouting for all to listen about how bad Amazon is because, gasp, it makes money.

      Now shoo or the whack-a-troll game will begin.

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    2. Patrick A,

      The problem with your link up above is that you’re providing invalid data in your effort to provide data demonstrating that Amazon abuses their workers. See, in a plant like that, the work environment (which frankly sounds hideously abusive to me – but I don’t know the whole story and there may actually be mitigating factors. Not that I can think of any, but I’m not going to judge without knowing the rest of the story) isn’t set by Amazon, it’s set by the company that owns and manages the plant – which you yourself said is a third party Amazon uses (“an Amazon subcontractor”).

      Valid data would be any of the links I found googling “Amazon working conditions” – some of which described conditions similar to this, while others described enviable conditions (Vacation time you can roll over if you don’t use? Ditto personal time? I don’t get that).

      The single incident that raised a big fuss last year, with 110+ temperatures in an Allentown, PA warehouse – I live less than 20 miles from that location. With an open design that allows plenty of airflow – and unlimited access to drinking water – those conditions aren’t that arduous. I worked in that for several months as a geologist and field hand, lugging heavy gear around. It’s not fun, but it’s not impossible, and here, while 90+ is common, 100+ is only a few days, if at all. Last year was unusual, with a string of very high 90s, low 100s temperatures, overcast nights so nothing cooled down, and the whole thing didn’t break for over a week as I recall. That was ugly everywhere, and I’ve got no doubt it was hideous for the people in the warehouse. I’ve worked – as a teacher – in schools that stayed open through temperatures like that, even though the schools had no air conditioning.

      Essentially, from what I’ve found online, there’s no evidence Amazon is systemically abusive although there’s plenty of evidence at least some of their locations are if not outright abusive then certainly borderline. What their supplier networks do isn’t really up to Amazon – the owners of the supplier plants would be well within their rights (even if morally wrong) to tell Amazon where to shove it if said owners were abusing employees and Amazon told them to stop.

      I’ll grant some sarcasm on the “worker’s paradise” comment, especially since the only font capable of adequately representing me at my worst would need drip blood and have daggers everywhere.

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    4. A “whiff” of sarcasm?? And a corpse left in a 110 degree warehouse for two weeks might smell a little off. But the point is that INITIATING your post with sarcasm reeks of bad faith the way a troll reeks of bad hygiene. Out of curiosity, I gather your expression of horror over “communist states” was sarcastic, so: can you cite any self-proclaimed “workers’ paradise” that was not a communist state? For bonus points, can you offer a brief defense of the treatment of actual workers in any “workers’ paradise”?

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      1. The sarcasm to which I referred was my own. (Yours is somewhat lacking, though I laud your extensive study of troll hygiene.) My reference to communist states wasn’t sarcasm however. *That* was outright mockery, which you also failed to get. While it would be enjoyable to lead you around the comments section with your particular brand of dog whistle, I’m not going to bother. However, a few parting thoughts on my way out the door.

        I feel no need to come up with any citations about the existence of non-communist worker resorts or the treatment any workers in such. Nor do I need to harken to Ms. Hoyt’s hysterical call to arms against the abuses of the Communist state.

        Why?

        Because I never once endorsed Communism in any form. Nor did I suggest the dissolution of Amazon, watering the tree of Fascism, or even a particularly strict spanking for the childish hand-wringing that marks much of the commentary. Read back. I tossed out a few phrases, almost completely irrelevant to the current discussion of American business, publishing and Amazon and you and a few others chased them around the room crying and flailing with both arms. Amusing to watch, but anyone who reacts in such a manner is unlikely to shed much light on the subjects under discussion.

        And that’s now readily apparent to anyone who stops by.

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        1. Tsk, Patrick – apparently like many egotists you don’t recognize ridicule when you’re the recipient. It is probably a issue of reading comprehension. I do applaud your recognition that your comments were irrelevant to the current discussion, as were your response to people’s efforts to connect them to the topic of discussion. About what was to be expected from someone incapable of actually engaging a topic relevantly with credible support for their arguments.

          Still, your willingness to be “it” in a fresh game of poke-the-troll is an act of surprising generosity.

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  28. I managed to miss the game of poke-the-troll while I was gone for a week. But thought I would point out a couple things, first of all I lived in Western Washington (where Amazon originated) when Amazon first started and saw their amazing business spiral upward. What I remember is the constant talk of what great employers Amazon was, how good the pay and benefits was, without the need to wear a suit and tie, because they were an internet company, so no clients actually seen the workers, therefore no dress code. I recall no complaints about how poorly they treated their workers.

    Next, the workers in the article linked are SUBCONTRACTORS!!!! For those of you who have never paid attention to how a capitalist society works, that means they ARE NOT employees of Amazon! Amazon has a job to do, they don’t have employees to do it, and don’t want the hassle for a variety of reasons to hire employees to do it. So they put the job up for bid, the contractor with the lowest bid (depending on how things are set up, many outfits discard the lowest bid, and then discretionarily chose from the next couple low bids) gets the job, Amazon pays them X number of dollars to do said job. Now, this job requires several different skillsets, so the contractor puts different smaller portions of the job up for bid again, these smaller portions are then bid on by smaller companies who either specialize in the skillset needed, or have manual labor workers for unskilled portions. Once again choosing either by price (low bid) or many times by past expierence and quality of work recieved. Thus Amazon is twice removed and not only not employers of the sadly mistreated and whining employees, but in all likelyhood was completely unaware of any mistreatment.

    Finally, no air conditioning in a warehouse? Sorry unless the warehouse stored perishable items I never heard of one WITH air conditioning; this is not unusual this should be common sense. A warehouse is a huge, generally poorly insulated and almost always high-ceiling and generally built to be very ineffiecent to either heat or cool. Generally they have doors open while inventory is being added or removed (the main purpose of warehouse workers) which makes all the treated air (wether heated or cooled) escape outside immediately. Some have mentioned on here of working in warehouses that are heated, many of those I have been in not only do not have air conditioning, but also deem heat unnecesary, most of the others run it only when the doors are closed and it will provide some slight lasting benefit, generally that of drying and removing moisture more so than any comfort for the employee. Employees are expected to have enough brains to dress for weather, heavier, warmer clothing for cold weather, waterproof if they are going to be going in and out during wet weather, and cooler lighter clothes during hot weather. If they wear inappropriate clothing and suffer from the weather, well maybe they’ll learn from experience.

    Yes I expect employees to complain at the miserable day they had at work, over a cold beer at the bar, on the way home. That is human nature, I personally have spent quit a few days swinging a doublejack (10 lb sledgehammer) all day in the direct sun, with highs in the upper 90’s and into the triple digits. Did I like it? No, not really, I’m not much of a masochist, but I did it, it was my job. Did I complain about it, Your durn tootin’ right I did! But that’s all I did, complained about the weather, the stupidity of an employer that wanted to start at 7:00 am in such weather, instead of 4:00 am when it was just getting light enough to work, and was still relatively cool out for a few hours, maybe get some sympathy, possibly even get someone to buy that cold beer. But I didn’t feel misused really, the work needed done, I needed the money, and was willing to do the work for the money. If didn’t feel the work was worth the kind of pay being offered, I was free to walk away, and no matter how much I complained about it, I accepted it as normal, and if some reporter came up to me and asked questions about my work environment, I would have told them so. At the time, a 10-12 hour day of swinging a doublejack in 100 degree heat was worth $150-200 to me, on the other hand I wouldn’t sit in an office and listen to a bunch of state workers that have never held a real job in their life prattle on about how abused and misused they are, and that they should have the right to use their sickdays(something I have never had in a real job, except at the employers discretion) for taking thier hamster in to have its toenails trimmed (true story, I don’t make this up) for 3 times that kind of money, yet I know those that do for less money than I made doing the former.

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  29. Pingback: Shilling for Traffic – “Rebuttals” Against Speaking Out Against Censorship Ring Hollow | S. V. Rowle

    1. I’m not following the link, because then I’ll have to write a post about it and there’s no point, however: a) The title is wrong. My traffic didn’t increase through any of these posts. The recent entry that got extraordinary traffic was the review of Ric Locke’s book. Oh, yeah, the one about eeeevil was the second. So if I wanted to increase my traffic I’d talk about Ric Locke more. :-P b) the premiss is wrong. Amazon can’t engage in censorship — there is no way for them to prevent your book being available elsewhere. c) Amazon doesn’t have a contract with IPG — on planet Earth and at least under the current legal regime, that means it’s illegal for them to sell IPG books. d) IPG is about as needed to authors (and publishers) as tusks on a dog. They are obsolete and fighting to convince themselves (and us) of their relevance. e) yes, please PLEASE do shut up and sit down. I have enough distractions from cats and kids. May I finish a book without my colleagues beclowning themselves and dancing around making everyone believe we’re all mentally retarded. Traditional publishers already think that. Don’t encourage them. But if you can’t control yourselves and must bleat like idiot sheep, try to keep it to a low roar, mkay?

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      2. You didn’t miss anything. However, you were put in good company — Dean Wesley Smith and J. A. Konrath — as being those without a clue. Yes, I’m rolling my eyes now. Frankly, the shilling is to try to get traffic from this blog, imo, so I say no one else go. Don’t follow the link. Stay here and see what Sarah has to say in today’s post instead.

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      3. I followed it. I’m a curious sort, and I know some people who make money writing Erotica.

        I’m not sure that PayPal and the Credit Card companies have thought this through. If you follow things to their logical conclusion, they should be refusing to deal with AT&T and all of the other ISPs, since they all allow porn on their networks.

        Of course we know why they are doing this. Some Pressure Group got to them, and they didn’t have the guts to stand up and fight.

        Wayne

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        1. “Of course we know why they are doing this. Some Pressure Group got to them, and they didn’t have the guts to stand up and fight.”

          And we “know” this, how?

          I have as yet seen no reason to doubt their explanation that this is all about the high costs of returns and charge backs. Oh, I know people who claim to “know” that’s not what it’s really about, but I have seen no actual evidence.

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          1. Martin,

            PayPal’s explanation could be true, but the people I know who are making money writing Erotica haven’t seen any signs of a “high rate of returns and charge backs,” and some of what they are writing is pretty wild stuff. At least by my standards.

            We know that people have tried to get a wide variety of Television Shows, Books, Movies, etc. banned because they didn’t like them. Or they’ve tried to push businesses into dumping celebrities they were using for endorsements. Think Michael Vick, Tiger Woods, and Ellen Degeneres.

            Last, there’s the efforts by the RIAA and MPAA to get the Credit Card companies to block payments to websites that they don’t like. I don’t know if you heard about Dajaz1? The Justice Department took their domain name (Operation in Our Sites), gave it back a year later with no explanation, and when the SOPA legislation was tabled Dajaz1 found out that their site was listed as a site that the Credit Card companies would be blocked from dealing with.

            Add it all together, and I strongly suspect that there has been an underground pressure campaign against the Credit Card companies, and since they knew that SOPA would have forced them to stop dealing with certain sites, they decided to cave on anyone who pushed hard.

            This is only a guess of course. It would be interesting to see this go to court, and to see the ‘discovery’ on PayPal, Mastercard, and Visa.

            Wayne

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          2. Wayne questions it, and it’s of course entirely possible he’s right, but I’d like to point out that spelling and grammar seem to go straight down hill in direct proportion to the strangeness of the acts spoken about. I don’t know why. Perhaps those who write them are afraid to show them to anyone. I mean, most indies get copyedited by the equivalent of dear old aunt Minnie. (How do I know about that proportion — let’s just say I have friends who download these when they’re free and INSIST on reading me the funnier/stranger passages. Aloud. (No, I haven’t shot them yet. Dan won’t tell me where he hid the gun. It’s a matter of time, though.) At any rate is it possible there ARE more refunds because after a while the afflicted reader ends up going “In her EAR? That can’t be right!” Just a thought, and I’m probably wrong.

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            1. I’m probably wrong

              Are you allowed to say that on the internets??? I thought there were rules, or laws or protocols about such language? I am shocked, shocked! Who knows where such things might lead???? You have started down a slippery slope and imperil all civilization, Ms Sarah!

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        2. To both Wayne and Martin:

          If you’d *truly* followed this, you’d know that this is something that eBay went through a few years ago. It’s *not* a pressure group — it’s actually using erotica as money laundering. Much the same as online gaming for money. It’s ever so much easier to blame it all on unspecified “pressure groups” than it is to actually look at the evidence to hand.

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            1. I’ll ask my husband when he gets home. He used to do a lot on eBay, and that was the first thing he said when the PayPal/erotica broke. Evidently, eBay went through a lot of changes over it. You could probably google for it. I’m so ridiculously behind in email and such that I’m up to my ears trying to clean out my inbox (1000 unread emails and counting)

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              1. Well, since I held Wayne to a high standard of proof, I’ll have to be consistent here. I would like to see those links, too. Just because it has happened doesn’t prove it’s happening here (for both your theory and Wayne’s).

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              2. I freaked out when my unread emails hit 300. Down to 47 now…

                I’ve started to take weekends off. No emails. No Facebook. No Twitter.

                The aim is to write. Weekends end up being better for me, because of family schedules. It wasn’t as bad before they took my wife’s drivers license away over medical concerns. She’s hoping to get it back soon, and I REALLY hope she does. I don’t mind driving her places, but it blows my concentration all to hell.

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                1. Being in the hospital twice in a week sort of put me behind in a lot of things ::wry grin:: I’m just plugging, taking it *very* slow. :-)

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  30. The important thing to remember is that Writing is a business. Part of running a business is future proofing.

    What are your plans if your publisher implodes in some way tomorrow? Or your distributor (which is what Smashwords and Amazon really are).

    This may seem unlikely to you, but I’ve seen too many companies do strange things, without entering bankruptcy. A lot of those companies weren’t very big, and they made Doctor Doom (remember him from the Fantastic Four comics) look positively sane by comparison.

    And then there’s the companies that failed. Key Porter Books (Canadian firm) went under last winter.

    Never mind your agent, who may not be all that stable.

    You really need contingency plans in place in case for everyone you deal with. Some of them will be simple. You probably have a dozen office supply shops in easy driving range. Some of them, like what to do if one of your major suppliers (which would include Amazon) decides to act strange, are going to be more complicated, and take longer to work out.

    Yes, it will be a bit of work, but better now than when the crunch has already hit.

    Wayne

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