Self-Published eBooks Are a Realistic (and Profitable) Option

A friend of mine told me about some crazy author, Barry Eisler, who turned down $500,000 from a big name publisher so he could self-publish his work as an eBook for sale on Kindle, B&N, etc.  Let me repeat that: he turned down half a million dollars so he could sell his own book on his own online!  That's some serious freaking coin to turn down!

Another self-published author, J.A. Konrath, has a blog on which he posted an interview he had with Barry Eisler about his decision, the current state of the publishing industry, and the future of self-publishing.  It's a great read, albeit a VERY long read, but you should definitely read it.  I've been checking out J.A. Konrath's blog regularly since I read that interview, and he has some good stuff on there.  I even picked up one of his books for $0.99, which I hope to read after I take USMLE Step 1 in June.

I've been wondering why some of my favorite authors, like Orson Scott Card, don't just drop their corporate publishers and do their own thing online.  Seeing as most authors only get 14.9% of online book sales, they can make MORE money per sale (70%) if they self-publish and lower the price to $2.99 instead of the publisher's standard $9.99-$14.99 price.  And if they're a big name author, they could still get away with $9.99 and pocket a LOT more money than they would if their publisher offered the ebook instead.  I've always despised the fact that when I purchase a book, so little of my money goes to the actual content creator, but I had no idea it was only a paltry 14.9%.

It's an interesting development, and I hope more authors go that route in the future.  It bothers me to no end when publishers gouge customers on ebook prices, sometimes even making them MORE EXPENSIVE than the hardcover or paperback version!  I don't mind paying $10 for a book -- the author deserves it! -- but I'd feel much better about it if I knew the author was actually getting more of that money.  The corporate publishing model is outdated and unnecessary, and the sooner authors, publishers, and readers realize this, the better off everyone will be.

Let's try not to have a repeat of the music industry resisting digital sales and trying to force customers to purchase their music the way the music industry wanted them to.  That's what the publishers are trying to do by delaying ebook releases and/or raising the price, and it's very off-putting to customers like me who just want to enjoy the latest from their favorite authors while making sure those authors receive proper compensation for all their hard work!

Google Being Less Open with Honeycomb (Android 3.0)

I heard about this a few days ago, and I'm trying not to jump to conclusions too hastily.  Google recently announced that they will delay the release of the source code for Honeycomb, the latest version of Android made specifically for tablets.  How long will they delay it?  No one knows for sure, and Google hasn't been very clear about it.  Open source developers are understandably pissed off -- the author of that Ars article, Ryan Paul (Segphault), started an awesome open source microblogging application for Ubuntu called Gwibber that I use all the time.  The reason for the delay has some merit, however, because in an attempt to get Honeycomb finished, Google stopped worrying about making sure that it would work on phones.

Google's worried that if they release the source right now, Honeycomb will be slapped onto phones or crappy tablets it wasn't meant to run on, and the user experience will suffer for it.  They have an argument here, in that some of the cheap ass Android tablets out there really give Android and Google a bad reputation.  If I buy a $100 Android tablet and find that it's complete junk, I might think that all Android tablets will be like that, which is not the case.  Motorola may also have wanted Google to delay the release of the source code in order to boost Xoom sales rather than having people just update their current Android 2.2 or 2.3 tablets to run Honeycomb.

On the other hand, some tablets such as the dual-core Tegra 2 G-Tablet come with garbage software pre-installed, but because of Android's open source nature, enthusiasts have made custom ROMs that make the G-Tablet an excellent, cheap Android tablet.  I was VERY tempted to pick one up off of Woot the other day for $285 shipped, but Google's delay in releasing the Honeycomb source convinced me otherwise.  The G-Tablet's specs are pretty close to that of the Xoom, but at less than half the cost!  The screen isn't quite as nice, and it has half the RAM, but it would have made an excellent, cheaper alternative to the Xoom once some XDA developers got Honeycomb running on it.  Unfortunately, there's no telling when that will happen now.  In the meantime, I've decided to give Apple's iPad 2 a shot.

I'm very disappointed with Google right now.  I run CyanogenMod 7 (an open source, community-based ROM) on my HTC Evo, and it runs WAY better than the much slower, clunkier HTC Sense interface that came with my phone.  Custom ROMs like CM7 aren't possible without the Android source being openly available.  I understand Google wanting to have more control over the Android source so that the market isn't flooded with crappy products that claim to be the newest Android devices.  To be honest, you can't be as confident that every Android-based device is going to be as solid or consistent an experience as it is on nicer devices like the Evo.  Unfortunately, delaying or withholding the release of the source code like this also cripples the possibilities that an open platform like Android is supposed to be able to offer.  The custom kernels and ROMs that are possible with Android are among the main reasons I switched to Android in the first place!

I hope this really is just a delay in releasing the source code and that it gets released sooner rather than later.  If not, Honeycomb development is going to be severely hindered, and the Android tablet software scene needs as much help as possible to catch up to Apple's 1 year head-start.  Until then, we have no choice but to just wait and see what the hell Google decides to do.

Initial Thoughts: iPad 2 vs. Android 3.0 (Honeycomb)

I'm a big proponent of open source software.  I absolutely love my HTC Evo 4G (running CyanogenMod 7), and I've been using Ubuntu on my home computers pretty much exclusively for ~5 years now.  I use MythTV on my media server so I can record OTA HDTV broadcasts via my antenna for free; it even automatically detects commercial breaks so I can skip them with a simple press of a button when I'm watching recorded TV shows.  It's pretty sweet.

So, simply put, Apple products aren't really designed with me in mind.  I like to have full control over my software and hardware so I can tinker with it to get it to run just the way I want.  That's the beauty of open source software, but it's not for everyone.  Apple makes excellent hardware, and their software works beautifully together.  My issue with Apple isn't their products, but rather with how their software is managed.  Apple's iPhone, iPod, and iPad products are also meant to be managed with iTunes, which I can't use because I run Ubuntu.  I prefer my mobile device to act like a USB flash drive so I can transfer music and other documents to it myself and have it detected by the device's software without issue.  This lets me use my Evo as a USB storage device to transfer files between pretty much any computer I want without them needing to have iTunes installed.

Apple's New Policies Prove Difficult for Some Developers

Ars Technica recently posted an update regarding Apple's changes to their app store policies.  Basically, "Anyone who sells subscription-based content outside the App Store must also use Apple's system, giving Apple a 30 percent cut."  This might not seem like a very big deal at first, but if you read that newest update from Ars, you can understand why some developers are pissed off.

There's a logistical problem with an app having to offer a subscription 2 ways -- through the app store and through their own transaction/subscription service.  How do you tell the user "hey, you need to choose how you want to pay for the exact same service either way, although one way gives Apple a 30% cut simply for our app being available on iOS."  For some developers, having Apple manage transactions is much easier, but other developers already have a revenue plan in place and Apple scraping 30% off the top can remove their incentive for having the app available on iOS.  Ars mentions two apps in particular, Readability and TinyGrab, two apps that could be very useful to iOS users but that won't be made available due to Apple's new policies.  I wouldn't be surprised to see things getting messy all over again when it comes to apps that allow access to Hulu, Netflix, Kindle, and other large services that many iOS users enjoy every day!

If you're still not sure why this is a big deal, let me offer an analogy to this situation to understand why some people are angry.  Say that a particular real estate company, Orange, owns 25% of the real estate market in a big city.  25% of all houses sold and all apartments/houses rented come from them.  Orange executives are sitting around trying to investigate "alternative revenue opportunities," and they realize that they're really losing out because every unit they sell spends all of this money on electricity, Internet access, and cable/satellite service, but that they never see a dime of that money.  But hey, they deserve some of that money because if they hadn't sold/rented that unit, those utility companies would never have gotten that customer!  Orange is in no way involved with these services aside from selling the house/apartment to the occupants who later purchase those services.  To increase revenues, they tell all of these utility companies that for every customer they got from an Orange real estate property (even houses sold several years ago), the utility company needs to give Orange 30% of all customer fees.  And if they don't comply, then they won't be allowed to offer services to all current and future Orange real estate customers.  Even if Orange couldn't do this with houses, it would be relatively manageable with a lot of their rental properties, which would be devastating to these utility companies.

Bill Maher on NFL Socialism vs. MLB Capitalism

A week ago on Real Time, Bill Maher had an interesting take on the Super Bowl in his segment, "New Rules."  It's only about 5 minutes long, so rather than paraphrase it, I'll just have you watch the video:





Bill Maher is an interesting person -- he usually supports what "the scientists" say, but at other times he just goes his own way regardless of what the scientific evidence says, as he does with vaccines.  Nevertheless, he still has some interesting moments on his show when he's not being too much of an ass.  He is a comedian though, and thus when he says things, you need to consider the legitimacy of those claims.


In this case, I decided to look at the list of winners for both the Super Bowl and the World Series.  I then calculated the percent of the total number of championship games that each team had appeared in and/or won (as a percent of the total, not of their appearances).  This information is summarized in the tables below, after the break.

Do Americans spend their money more wisely than the government?

I was watching this Friday's Real Time with Bill Maher, and one of the Republican guests said something along the line of I believe Americans know how to spend their money more wisely than their government does.  This is something you hear a lot from Republicans.  In general, I agree to the degree that I'd rather spend the majority of my money myself rather than give it to the government to spend on whatever.  However, that doesn't mean that Americans necessarily spend their money more wisely.  For one, some things the government spends money on would be impractical and economically unsound for a person to do on an individual basis (e.g. roads and national defense).

Still, considering all the talk about the national debt, I wondered how much debt the average American household was in compared to the government when you compensated for the difference in wages.  In other word's, what's the average American household's debt as a percentage of its income compared to the US government's debt as a percentage of government spending?

Cochrane Review: Statins in Low-Risk Patient Populations

Dr. Steven Novella recently posted about a Cochrane review of statins (cholesterol-lowering drugs) on SBM.  As Dr. Novella says, the question is not about whether or not statins work (they do), but whether or not their use is warranted in low-risk populations.  The Cochrane review found that 1000 low-risk patients would need to be treated in order to prevent one death per year from a cardiovascular event.  10+ million people in the US are on a statin, but I'm not sure how many of them are at a low risk of having a cardiovascular event.

At the end of his post, Dr. Novella wonders what the cost breakdown would be for something like this.  How much money is spent on the statins versus how much would have been spent on the cardiovascular events the drug helped patients avoid?  I decided to make a few quick calculations just to see what kind of ballpark figures we're looking at.  With all the talk about rising healthcare costs, I thought this would be worth looking into.  This is by no means conclusive, and like I said, I don't know how many low-risk patients are taking statins.  This is more of an intellectual exercise, as I'd expect someone with greater access to statistics concerning statin use to be able to come up with a much more accurate figure.  But I'll give it a shot anyway because I'm bored and I don't feel like studying for my exams on Monday (which, coincidentally, are over cardiology!).