Disqus - Latest Comments for Andrew_Wheeler

Re: How To Install Windows On Your Mac When All Else Fails

Andrew Wheeler — Fri, 01 May 2015 12:12:34 -0000

Thanks a heap for this! I had the same issue -- needed to reinstall Windows on a 2010 iMac after replacing the internal HD -- and nothing else worked.

The one thing you might want to expand slightly is step 4 -- I had to poke around in Terminal a bit to make sure all of the original files were deleted. I don't know if that problem hits everyone, but it's something to take note of: make sure the invisible files (especially, in my case, bootmgr) are cleared out and replaced with the ones from the USB stick.

I also had to restart after Step 3 for my machine to see the Bootcamp partition again -- it had changed the name, but I was able to just change it back and continue.

Re: One Writer Asks: Barnes & Noble = Blockbuster? - mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

Andrew Wheeler — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 11:19:22 -0000

I don't know who Mike Cane is, and if that squib is representative of his thinking, I don't need to know any more. I particularly like his insinuation that B&N should have created an e-book explosion 12 years ago; he clearly had nothing to do with the publishing industry then.

Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Re: New York Times Bestseller Seth Godin to No Longer Publish Books Traditionally - GalleyCat

Andrew Wheeler — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 20:26:25 -0000

"the big push at launch"

Oh, yes, I can see how horrible that must have been for him. Poor, sad Seth Godin.

And is he really saying that his ideas are so ephemeral that they're worthless if they have to wait for book form? Is that a good marketing strategy for a man trying to sell his expertise?

Re: Millions of Kindles Sold - mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

Andrew Wheeler — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 14:57:28 -0000

He said it in Bezos-speak, of course -- those carefully-hedged statements that we Amazon-watchers have been familiar with since the heady "we didn't lose as much money this quarter as we'd projected, therefore that counts as profit" days of the late '90s. And he did NOT say that Amazon has SOLD millions of Kindles -- he said that millions of people OWN Kindles. Hm, Amazon owns all of the Kindles that it still has in inventory, and it's a public company...how many shareholders thus "own" Kindles?

I suspect this really means that the two-millionth (or the million-and-first, if one is excessively cynical) Kindle just rolled off the assembly line, and Bezos is crowing about that without actually saying what he's crowing about.

Re: Richard Curtis: Book Publishing 10 Years in the Future - GalleyCat

Andrew Wheeler — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 09:15:24 -0000

Richard's #1 and #2 will actually create a book in which promotion and marketing are vastly more important -- getting a book physically into many locations (and not just having that book virtually available on an Expresso with a million other books, all clamoring for the same scarce attention) will be more difficult. The "long tail" is very, very skinny -- and extending it into the millions means that the vast majority of those books will sell only very tiny numbers of copies.

On the other end, the biggest books will likely get much larger, and their discounts much more competitive. And their acquisition will continue to be exceptionally competitive for publishers.

(Either that, or the next-generation Expresso will be more like a Redbox DVD kiosk -- ready to print out about three dozen very popular books, not a million books of minor interest.)

Re: Are Kindle Users More Valuable Than Regular Readers? - mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

Andrew Wheeler — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:58:11 -0000

Of course! <rolls eyes=""> Publishers should encourage the people who consume more resources and pay less money! Too bad I'm not a high-paid consultant; I'd never think of a brilliant policy like that!

Re: Give Us Links Or We Won't Sell Your Books: Really? - mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

Andrew Wheeler — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 08:54:35 -0000

Sounds like Business 101 to me: leverage what you do have (control over placement in a thousand B&N stores) to get a bigger piece of what you want (online sales).

And why do authors think B&N should support them if they won't support it, anyway?

Re: Frustrated Novelist Julia Child Finally Tops Bestseller List - mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

Andrew Wheeler — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 15:10:10 -0000

But hasn't the Times always said that backlist books are not eligible for its bestseller lists? To add insult to injury, at this time every year they silently delete several perennialhigh-selling books, bought by students for their literature classes.

How come they bend their rules for this particular book? And can we get a clear listing of what constitutes the kind of "backlist" that they will, or won't, suppress?

Re: What's Urban Fantasy? What's Paranormal Romance? - mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

Andrew Wheeler — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 13:53:47 -0000

All three of those series are published as urban fantasy; I don't think you're looking far enough over to see real paranormal romance.

Paranormals are things like J.R. Ward's "Black Dagger Brotherhood" and Sherrilyn Kenyon's "Dark Hunter." There are definite similarities to UF, but those books are much more focused on romantic relationships than even Laurell Hamilton, and incorporate substantial genre tropes from the larger world of romance.

And the easy way to tell which side a particular book falls is to look at the imprint -- all three of the books you mention are from Science Fiction/Fantasy imprints (Ace and Roc). Romance imprints publish paranormal romance.

Re: Dan Brown and Publishing's "DBDay" - mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

Andrew Wheeler — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 17:01:22 -0000

OK, let's have a quick dose of reality. There will not be any fewer slots on the bestseller list the week that LOST SYMBOL publishes. Sure, Brown will have the lock on #1 on the fiction charts, but that leaves a lot of list real estate up for grabs for...other books!

Add to that the fact that people do have a tendency to buy more books when they're buying one -- and that LOST SYMBOL will drive a hell of a lot of traffic to various booksellers -- and there is absolutely nothing at all for most writers to be worried about.

(If your marketer/publicist is also handling Brown? Yeah, then you should go live on a desert island for a few months, just to save your tooth enamel.)

Re: Reforming Real Estate Coverage - mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

Andrew Wheeler — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 09:48:12 -0000

There's no evidence the "mainstream media" did miss the bubble; there were many, many articles about it ahead of time, and many pundits complaining about it.

For a representative sample, here's a Google search on "real estate bubble" from 2006; note that there's an article from Business Week dated 2/23/06 explicitly leading with "Much has been written about the residential real estate bubble...."

The number of articles using that phrase actually peaked in 2005, two years before the bubble burst. The evidence does not tend to support the assertion that the media ignored this problem.

Re: #Amazonfail: A Personal Perspective - mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

Andrew Wheeler — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 19:09:58 -0000

If only LBGT-themed books had been hit by the "glitch," than that anonymous confession might have the same chance of being true as any other anonymous confession does. But, since the "glitch" hit many other books with themes vaguely related to sex, it's wrong on its face.

Also, what can be flagged as "inappropriate" by users on Amazon are *reviews.*

Also also, these books were not "de-listed," they were made harder to find in normal search, which is not the same thing. On Sunday, when a search for "homosexuality" brought up almost entirely right-wing anti-gay books, a search for "gay sex" brought up the usual mix of gay erotica, romance, and how-to.

The Seattle Times has a story that includes Amazon's actual (belated) apology/explanation: http://seattletimes.nwsourc....

Re: Seth Godin Urges Agents to "Hyperspecialize" - mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

Andrew Wheeler — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 12:07:59 -0000

This would be Seth Godin, who clearly thinks *his* advice and expertise is immensely valuable to *everyone*?

Do I laugh at the irony, or just nod sagely?

Re: Running Advertisements in Novels - mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

Andrew Wheeler — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 11:54:17 -0000

Books did have advertising in them -- paperbacks from the '60s and '70s routinely had bound-in advertisements. Authors and their agents got annoyed, either because of the cheapening effect of two pages of KOOLS menthol to their undying prose, or because they weren't given a cut of the revenue, and the whole thing went away twenty-five to thirty years ago.

When I looked into it about a decade ago, I learned that the technology to do those ads was gone; the presses that printed paperbacks then are out of service, and the new ones don't have that capacity. (Although, if there's enough money to be made, I'd bet presses could be modified.)

I also note the existence of the 2001 novel The Bulgari Connection, by Fay Weldon, whose title is itself an advertisement.

Re: October's Books Sales Down 20 Percent, Publishers Say - mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

Andrew Wheeler — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 16:52:33 -0000

Not that it makes these numbers any better, but it should be noted that these are sell-in numbers, rather than sell-through. That is, these are net sales by publishers to their customers -- the online retailers, bookstore chains, superstores and so on of the world -- rather than sales to end consumers.

They're also net sales, which means they're affected by both returns and by tightening orders from booksellers.

So this figure shows, primarily, that the pipeline shrunk a lot that particular month. Without lining it up with a metric of consumer behavior, though, it's difficult to say if it indicates primarily a tightening of inventory at the retail level or an drop in consumer sales. (Or, as is most likely, both.)

Re: The Ethics of E-Book Piracy - mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

Andrew Wheeler — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 16:42:06 -0000

From the author's point of view: it's all a loss. If this reader gets pirated electronic copies, the author gets nothing and the reader is a (minor) crook. If this reader bends to societal pressure and gets used books, then the reader gets less useful, legal books, and the author...still gets nothing.

If I were the author, I doubt I'd care. Nothing is nothing, either way.

Re: Are Big Publishers Strangling the Short Story? - mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

Andrew Wheeler — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 16:19:05 -0000

There's a buried assumption in that piece -- that the book publishers of a particular author will have the rights to distribute individual new stories by that author as they are published. This isn't currently true, and, if anyone is going to be e-mailing a list of fans that a new story is available, it's most likely going to be done by the writer.