Linkville

Attempt number two at posting: I don't know if it's having so many tabs open (with links I've been collecting to share here) that's making Chrome slow down. I'm also not sure how my last livejournal tab got closed before posting (though that could have just been my slippery fingers). But I figure I'd better share some of this stuff and see if that speeds up my work process on this end.

• In Reads takes a look at the Amazon royalty structure for Kindle books, and questions whether the cut off point for high royalties at $2.99 is fair. (Books priced between $2.99 and $9.99 receive 70% royalties; below $2.99 they receive 35%.) With Amazon pitching a new tablet to compete with the iPad, I bet we see this type of conversation keep cropping up.


• When the agency model first came out, I, and others, questioned who was benefiting. From what I knew from working with physical books at a bookstore, the publisher sets a cover price, charges retailers a percentage of that price, and the retailer decides how to price it to best sell the books to their customers. The agency model takes away the retailer's options to price the book for their customers -- which looks to me like it's shorting the consumers. I couldn't figure out the benefit to the publishers for this, but apparently, it's that they could sell their books to Apple. And now, according to Business Week, Apple and the publishers who have embraced the agency model are facing a suit for e-book price fixing. So my feeling that there was something fishy about the model is not a unique thought!


• A writer for the Guardian asks, again, if e-books are ushering print out. According to the commenters, the answer is still no.


• Via Rob Schmidt from Newspaper Rock, National Geographic tested the representation of the Apache in the Cowboys and Aliens movie. Some of the things I mentioned in my review came up; other things they caught I did short pieces on in the history bits of C&AII. For example, War Hawk (who doesn't have a traditional Apache name) talks a little about naming conventions here. Apache names reflected something about their personal nature, and during the time in which C&AII is set, a lot of those names began with "Angry." I can't track down my original sources on that information, but photographer Rico Leffana wrote about some of that same history in a short essay on Fort Apache.

In the meantime -- plenty of writing and editing work keeping this Abbott busy! On the fun side, Bug and I both went on our first ride on the electric trolley, which I've written about briefly on Branford Patch, and had a great time.