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“I Don’t Think I Lose A Print Sale By Selling in eBook”

My own guess, based on watching my sales profile over the years, is that print, eBook and audiobook do not inherently cannibalize each others’ sales — it seems to me that for each there is a class of reader that is “native” to each — that is, there is a group of readers who strongly prefers print over eBook or audio, another group who prefers eBook strongly to the other formats, and a third group (correlated, I imagine, with people who have long commutes) who strongly prefer audiobook. I don’t think I lose a print sale by selling in eBook, or an eBook sale by selling in audio — rather, that selling in each of these formats is allowing me to expand my overall audience. Once again, this is an argument for remaining actively involved in all of the formats rather than throwing one (or more) overboard and putting all my chips on a single format.

From here.

John Scalzi breaks down the sales of his last novel, Redshirts, across formats now that Tor has moved the title from hardcover to paperback in print form, and it’s the kind of thing that’s fascinating for someone like me, who’s unnaturally geeky about this kind of thing. The part about digital and audio and print not cannibalizing the other format’s sales is of particular interest to me, because I’m beginning to suspect that the negative sales velocity that digital brought to analog music and movies just doesn’t exist for either books or comics, perhaps because the latter two are more active pastimes and therefore have more engaged audiences with more specific interests and habits surrounding their preferred format.

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Mon-El Times Three

My subconscious decided to offer me a strange gift this weekend, in the form of a particularly vivid dream where I was leaving old jobs I’d once held – Clearly, this week being my last for both SpinOff and Comics Alliance is weighing on my mind more than I’d realized – and all of my old workmates were preparing individual parties to say farewell, with each workplace chipping in to buy me a going away present. So far, so sweet, you might think, and you’d be right. Except for this strange detail: Each of the three workplaces had chipped in to buy three separate but identical action figures of the Legion of Super- Heroes character Mon-El.

Now, I’m a pretty big LOSH fan, I’ll admit, but quite why my subconscious chose one of the more bland characters from the series as the gift chosen by seemingly everyone for me, I may never know. Now, though, I’m almost hoping for a Mon-El in the mail before the week is over (Although I’d prefer a Darkseid or Mister Miracle).

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Ride Me Like A

From the Guardian’s Photo Blog:

A man rides a horse through a bonfire in San Bartolome de Pinares, Spain, in honour of Saint Anthony, the patron saint of animals. On the eve of Saint Anthony’s Day hundreds of people ride their horses through the narrow cobblestone streets of village during the Luminarias, a traditional festival meant to purify the animals with the smoke of the bonfires and protect them for the year to come. Photograph: Daniel Ochoa De Olza/AP

I feel like these people need to actually work on their “Let’s celebrate the patron saint of animals” activities. “Hey, we’re all about you today, horse! I’m gonna ride you through a bonfire. Yeah, you’re gonna get to run right through a bonfire. Doesn’t that sound great? Huh?”

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On Accidentally Writing Linkbait

And then there was the time that I wrote about Star Wars and Star Trek becoming more generic science-fiction for Time Entertainment, in response to the stories about ABC potentially reviving the oft-mooted Star Wars TV show. It was another piece that I could have done with another day on, but deadlines disagreed; what really happened was that Monday, as I’ve already suggested elsewhere, was a very distracting day for reasons that’ll become apparent soon, and so writing didn’t come easy. I gave it a pretty major overhaul before submitting yesterday, but I kinda wish I could get just one more swing at it, you know…?

It strikes me now that this piece is almost definitely link/troll-bait, accidentally (No, really, I swear that wasn’t on my mind when I pitched or wrote it for once). I’m reminded of a SpinOff piece I wrote about whether or not Spider-Man’s portrayal across different media had to be consistent that, to my utter surprise, got linked on io9 soon after going live, and my mix of “It’s got to be a really slow news day” and “It’s very weird to see someone write about you as if they’ve never met you; they even use the ‘referring to person with the last name only’ thing” when I saw it. I’d initially written it thinking it was relatively throwaway.

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“Which Is Total Nonsense, And They Know It”

You can’t put the genie back in the bottle on this one, people. And the networks and cable channels that are so easily offended need to get over it. Like pretty much every critic or writer I talked to, I stand behind everything I tweet. Did I just say your entertainment president was spinning the truth? Why, yes I did. That line about how the upcoming Monday night procedural or Thursday night comedy is heinously bad? Give me another 140 characters and I’ll say it again, only with exclamation points.

It seems to me there are two main complaints here about critics/writers and Twitter: 1) They don’t like the content, and 2) they think all we’re doing is tweeting and not writing stories. Which is total nonsense, and they know it. A good deal of people write their stories right there in the sessions. Others will write full reviews, interviews, feature stories, etc., back in their hotel rooms or at home if they’re local.

From here.

Tim Goodman reacts to criticism that Twitter use has resulted in a boring Television Critics Association press tour this month, and it’s pretty great. Coming as I do from a comic book culture where creators feel similarly about Twitter/social media/dismissive of the Internet in general, I found myself nodding in agreement a bunch.