Thursday, February 4th, 2010

Why You (Still) Can’t Get CSWS On Amazon

First thing to say is that work on these two books has been kicking my ass. I’ll admit it has been easier to tweet than blog. I’ll also want to say that it sucks that this is the topic to get me back up on the blog, since I still have some much better posts I’ve been trying to get up in a while.

But since I know many of you have been trying to get a copy of CSWS this week in paperback or for the Kindle, especially since semesters have been starting back up, I thought I should try to give a brief backgrounder on what’s going on.

In essence, the publishing industry is now publicly through what the music industry went through about a decade ago when technology began catching up with it. Distribution has changed drastically, a development accelerated by the Amazon Kindle and these past two weeks by Apple’s iPad. There’s so much more that needs to be said about this but I need to beg off for now. I think the right time will come soon.

Specifically, here’s what’s up. My publisher St. Martin’s Press is part of one of publishing’s Big Six Companies. (Yes, Chinatown scholars, the Six Companies…) It’s an imprint of Macmillan. On the other side is Amazon. What Amazon has done is to reduce the distribution chain to…pretty much Amazon. And it has begun to act as a publisher in recent months, trying to strike deals with authors directly.

Publishers have been up in arms–over a range of issues, not least of which is Amazon’s threat of poaching, but the one important frontline to this is the fight over pricing. Amazon has priced e-books at $9.99 and publishers want more. For years, publishers have received an average of $25 for hardcover titles. (Hardcovers are released at least a year or so before the titles move to paperback.)

E-books eliminate paper costs and distribution costs, so prices should be lower. (Royalties are another frontline, and an important question…for another post.) But many also believe that Amazon has been taking an L on each e-book sold in order to advance market share for the Kindle. Publishers can’t abide that for long. (Check how they reacted last year to the price wars involving Amazon, Wal-Mart and Target…)

And after the introduction of the iPad two weeks back, discussions intensified over pricing. Apple offered the Six Companies a range between $12.99 and $14.99. Macmillan went to Amazon and demanded the e-book prices be raised to the equivalent. Amazon balked.

Macmillan then told Amazon it would treat its e-books similar to the way it treats paperbacks–it would offer them at a much later date than the hardcover releases.

Amazon went nuclear. Last Friday afternoon they retaliated by pulling all of Macmillan’s titles in all editions from their website. (more…)

posted by @ 11:22 am | 3 Comments

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

Nas + Damian Marley Distant Relatives Event To Be Webcasted Saturday

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We just got news that the big event on Saturday with Nas, Damian Marley, DJ Kool Herc, DJ Red Alert, U-Roy, Rakim, King Jammy, Pat McKay and Waterflow (moderated by Sway Calloway) will be webcast live!

Just go here at 7pm EST on Saturday.

More info on the event here.

posted by @ 10:20 pm | 0 Comments

Friday, December 4th, 2009

Palin, Hawai’i, and Idaho :: A Retreat Into Whiteness Addendum

From Sam Tanenhaus’s piece on Sarah Palin in this week’s New Yorker:

Palin, though notoriously ill-travelled outside the United States, did journey far to the first of the four colleges she attended, in Hawaii (Jeff note: The school she attended was Hawai’i Pacific University on Oahu.) She and a friend who went with her lasted only one semester. “Hawaii was a little too perfect,” Palin writes. “Perpetual sunshine isn’t necessarily conducive to serious academics for eighteen-year-old Alaska girls.” Perhaps not. But Palin’s father, Chuck Heath, gave a different account to Conroy and Walshe. According to him, the presence of so many Asians and Pacific Islanders made her uncomfortable: “They were a minority type thing and it wasn’t glamorous, so she came home.” In any case, Palin reports that she much preferred her last stop, the University of Idaho, “because it was much like Alaska yet still ‘Outside.’ ”

Palin’s discomfort is easy to understand. Race is often the subtext of populist campaigns; their most potent appeal is to whites who are feeling under siege by changing economic and cultural conditions. Palin’s strength with this constituency can only have grown since the last election. It’s the reason that her bus tour is passing through the small cities and towns (Fort Wayne, Indiana; Washington, Pennsylvania) where the 2008 election might have been won. Already, she has drawn thousands of fans, some pitching tents overnight in the hope of receiving an autographed book. She is avoiding major cities in the Northeast and on the West Coast, a pointed assertion of her contempt for metropolitan élites. When McCain asked if Palin’s husband was prepared for the rigors of a national campaign, Palin assured him that he was, and also that they were the couple for the job: “We felt our very normalcy, our status as ordinary Americans, could be a much needed fresh breeze blowing into Washington, D.C.”

A final note to add: Palin was introduced at the RNC by Hawai’i Governor Linda Lingle, the first Republican to be elected to that office in over 30 years. Lingle had moved to the islands from California during the ’70s. There has been no mention of any Wailuku date on Palin’s book tour.

posted by @ 7:52 pm | 1 Comment

Monday, November 30th, 2009

The Retreat Into Whiteness

houses

Here’s a preview of a new piece I pulled together for ColorLines that reviews Rich Benjamin’s flawed but important book Searching For Whitopia.

It also engages Hua Hsu’s already classic piece, “The End of White America?”, which will likely prove to be one of the most influential pieces of writing by the end of the coming decade. All of this stuff is ground that I’m trying to cover in Who We Be.

Anyway, here’s a big old dose of the article:
(more…)

posted by @ 2:20 pm | 0 Comments

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

Andrea Lewis, 1957-2009

Is it me or are we really taking it this year in the Bay?

I’m saddened to learn of Andrea Lewis’s sudden passing.

I’d known Andrea through community organizing and progressive media circles for a long time. For many years, she was the voice of morning radio here on KPFA. She brought humaneness and humor to every topic she touched.

Andrea was like a warm cup of tea, easing you into the day while getting your brain working and heart beating. She represented exactly what the best of this community is about.

We miss you, Andrea. You, Gina, Ron, and everyone up there—your laughter lingers. Our love always.

There will be services next Tuesday, November 24 at 6:00pm at the First Unitarian Church of Oakland.

posted by @ 4:51 pm | 0 Comments

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

Who We Be :: A Preview In The Believer!

believer001

Apologies for not being as up as I should be. Lots to write about in the coming days–including 2009’s landmark year for graffiti books and the new movement around cultural policy taking shape. But here’s what I’ve been up to lately…

I’ve been hard at work on the new book, Who We Be: The Colorization of America, and am proud to announce that the new issue of this month’s The Believer features a preview of what’s coming in the book. It’s a piece I’ve done about the great cartoonist Morrie Turner, whose 45 years of work are on exhibition through November 19 at the SF Public Library. Check that show out, and go find the mag.

In the meantime, BIG shouts to Ed Park, Andrew Leland and the amazing Ms. Gabrielle Zucker. Here’s a taster:

The night of Barack Obama’s victory, eighty-six-year-old cartoonist Bil Keane called his old friend Morrie Turner, himself a sprightly eighty-four. Turner was working on his strip Wee Pals in the office of his tiny bungalow in South Berkeley, leaning over his drafting desk, its surface worn to the curve of the wood grain, tracing and embellishing the pencil outlines in India ink on Bristol board. A Law & Order rerun played in the background. Inking a strip to the natter of a TV program: for Turner, these were familiar rhythms, warm comfort for forty-three years. At that moment, the last thing he wanted to hear was the news….

More bites here!

posted by @ 3:03 pm | 1 Comment

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

Is Hip-Hop Grown Up?

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Where’s the Geritol swag bag, son?

The annual VH1 Hip-Hop Honors and this BBC article featuring my friends Joe Conzo and Nick Conway prompted TheRoot.com’s editor Danyel Smith to ask some of us if we had any opinions on the topic.

The great Noz, of Cocaine Blunts fame, weighed in. And so did Jozen Cummings and I. Here’s an excerpt from that short piece…

Ten years ago, I wrote a piece on hip-hop nostalgia. I was against it.

(Hey I said it was a short piece!) To read the whole thing, click here.

posted by @ 9:56 am | 2 Comments

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

Hip-Hop Theater Festival 2009 In Full Gear

For the fam in NYC, the Hip-Hop Theater Festival is already in full gear with its annual showcase of the best in hip-hop performing arts. In fact you already missed Sacha Jenkins’ collabo with Tommy Smith and the Beatnuts last weekend.

But not to fear, for this week, the fest will be showcasing fam-friendly Zomo the Rabbit: A Hip Hop Creation Myth, and the New York premiere of The Word Begins, written and performed by Steve Connell and Sekou (tha misfit).

Next week, there’s Radha Blank’s “Seed”, Shontina Verdon’s “Wanted”, and Betty Shamieh’s “The Alter Rgo Of An Arab-American Assimiliationist.” Plus, another opportunity to check one of my favorite pieces of all time by one of my favorite actors, Eisa Davis in her classic, autobiographical Angela’s Mixtape. Check the video below!

For all the details on the HHTF 2009 including tix and times, check here.

posted by @ 4:56 pm | 0 Comments

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

Rest In Power, Gina Hotta

Let us now praise the great Gina Hotta. Gina passed of a heart attack suddenly Monday evening.

Gina was one of those activists who worked like a river. She never demanded the spotlight, never sought the glory. She was all about the work.

And what great work she did.

DJ Phatrick called her “the voice of Asian American Bay Area.” Her activism was never separate from her journalism, and in that way, she cast a light for many of us to follow.

She was an Asian American activist who seemed to have her mind and spirit in every major movement of the past three decades–from peace and disarmament work right up through the University walkout last Thursday, where I saw her last, working the picket lines and talking about the administration’s anti-union activities.

But most of all, Gina was a lover of beautiful sound. If hip-hop had come a decade or so earlier, I’m convinced she would have been one of the first Asian woman DJs. She carried her equipment everywhere, capturing the sounds of change, and brought her work back to the world weekly on Apex Express.

Her collection of Asian American music and interviews with musicians is probably one of the deepest in the world. We could talk for hours about this artist or that band. Music kept her young. She was as up on the latest Asian American poets and DJs as she could school you on the lost soul and funk bands of the 70s.

You know how people use the word visionary to describe those who cause you to see the world differently? I don’t know what the word is for Gina. She made you hear the world differently.

It’s been a terrible year for passings. Rest in power, Gina, we’ll miss you.

Tune in tonight to Apex Express on KPFA or on the web at 7pm to hear a community tribute to Gina.

+ Adriel Luis of Ill-Literacy’s tribute
+ Apex Express tribute
+ Hyphen Magazine tribute
+ Oliver Wang tribute

posted by @ 7:00 am | 1 Comment

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

McCarthyism Is Now

McCARTHYISMTODAY
FIGHT BECK.

“If you call art made to express the ideals of democracy that we strive to create in the United States of America similar to that used by Goebbels and the “People’s Observer” during the reign of the Nazis in Germany, then we respond with images. If Nazi propaganda is their metaphor, than we give you the literal…”
-Artists’ Names Withheld

Download links for an 18×24 poster are at http://mccarthyismtoday.blogspot.com.

62 advertisers have pulled out of Glenn Beck’s show since the boycott began. Click here to add your name to the 275,000 who have already joined boycott support list. Click here to write letters to the editors of your local newspapers to make them tell the whole story on Glenn Beck today.

Pass it on.

posted by @ 2:40 pm | 1 Comment



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