Ransom Notes

From the days of Gutenberg to his modern day disciples, a myth has existed that a physical book lasts forever. Certainly, some have withstood the test of time. However, when Pocket Books invented the mass-market, pocket-sized paperback in 1938 with its publication of The Good Earth by Pearl Buck, the publishing world changed. During the next seventy years or so, the inexpensive paperback book dominated the mass-market delivery of written content – cheap, small and disposable, even to the extent that unsold paperbacks are stripped of their covers for a “return” credit from the publisher and the balance of the once hallowed book ground into pulp.

Although digital books were available as early as 1993, it was not until Sony introduced its E-ink reader in 2006 that a new mass-market for the delivery of “written” content truly began. Then, with the introduction of the Kindle and the Kindle eBook by Amazon in 2007, along with the nationwide rollout of high-speed broadband service and the spread of WiFi, a true “new world order” of book publishing began – the mass-market, digital eBook was born.

About a year later, the United States entered the Great Recession and the destruction of businesses and business models began in earnest. With consumer spending crippled, unemployment soaring and credit markets closed to the American consumer, the publishing industry’s reliance on physical book sales began to circle the drain. Bookstores around the U.S. started to suffer losses and began a march to near-oblivion. Fast-forward to 2011 and we see Borders in bankruptcy, Barnes & Noble up for sale after reporting losses quarter-after-quarter and small, independent bookstores unable to meet their rent. Furthermore, the crushing deficits of almost all of the 50 states, from California to Illinois to New Jersey, are producing a significant negative impact on both public and school libraries. The bottom line: the publishing industry’s traditional formula for success is no longer working.

One might conclude from the precipitous decline in bookstores that the public has stopped reading, but that is clearly not the case. In fact, in the last three months, it has been reported that eBooks are outselling physical books up to three-to-one at certain retailers. Coupled with declining prices of e-readers and the spread of tablets with apps from booksellers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble, a stunning democratization of book distribution has been unleashed. No longer do the traditional publishing houses, book wholesalers and book retailers have a death-grip on the distribution, display and sale of books. Today, anyone can become a published author and anyone can distribute his or her book across the globe with a few strokes on a keyboard. Of course, without a publisher to filter the flood of manuscripts and to support authors, writers who publish themselves are, with few exceptions, akin to adding one more tree to a dense, dark forest.

Clearly, if the U.S. economy stumbles again and the consumer is forced to retrench once more, the chain bookstores selling physical hard cover and paperback editions will no doubt suffer even more losses. The consequences of renewed harsh economic times will also be felt by the traditional book publishers as their physical book business model comes under further brutal attack from diminishing storefront retail outlets to reduced acquisition budgets at the 11,000 public libraries around the country.

But what is bad for the traditional physical publishers is very good for the reader. As generations become more accustomed to reading books on digital devices, the cost savings of buying a digital book vs. a physical book will win the day. This is not to say that the physical book will become extinct. There will always be a reason for some physical book publishing to exist, but the culture of possessing and reading the written word in physical form is quickly disappearing. For example, to go on a vacation and lug three or four or five books along has always required some inconvenience. To go on a vacation with a digital book reader and carry 10 or even 1,000 books along is a breeze. Or, as the digital educational market matures, young students carrying backpacks filled with heavy textbooks will become a distant memory as they tote only e-readers and tablets preloaded with a semester’s reading and reference materials.

There are some other important factors that distinguish this “new world order” of digital books from the soon-to-be bygone era of the physical book. Each of these factors favors the reader and puts the onus on authors and publishers. First, readers can freely sample the first few chapters of a book at no cost and no commitment. If people don’t like what they read, they don’t have to buy the book. Second, readers can freely comment and post a review about a book they purchased, telling other readers the good, bad or ugly truth about a particular title. And, third, if a reader purchases an eBook and doesn’t like it, the digital book can be returned electronically for full credit. The power of the pen is now shared among author, publisher and reader. The bar to produce really excellent books has been raised because the public has the power to vote with its dollars, voice its opinion and get a refund if the author disappoints them.

Which brings me to my assignment of reporting on the results at Stay Thirsty Publishing. Not every book that a publisher publishes is going to be a raging success. However, it has been this publisher’s philosophy to publish books that it is passionate about and that it believes will stand the test of time. So how has Stay Thirsty Publishing been doing in the two-plus years since this division of Stay Thirsty Media was launched as a digital book publisher? The answer brings into clear focus the difference between the physical book and the digital one.

Traditionally, physical books are only available in bookstore outlets for a matter of weeks. Huge bestsellers, of course, often stick around for months or longer, but the majority of books come and go with such speed that even authors have trouble finding their own books in stores.

The digital book, however, is available 24/7/365, for download to a computer or to a wireless device, both in the U.S. and around the world. A fresh copy is always ready regardless of the weather, the time zone or the economic conditions. And, the shelf life of a digital book will be measured in decades or longer, thereby allowing great books the time to find their audience rather than fall victim to retail shelf space turnover.

A few examples from Stay Thirsty Publishing’s catalog will help to make the point:

In March 2009, the first book published by Stay Thirsty Press was MRS. BEAST by award-winning author Pamela Ditchoff. Last month, June 2011, over 27 months after publication, this story of what happened to the famous fairy tale princesses – Beauty of Beauty and the Beast, Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty after they said, “I Do!” – was ranked by Amazon at #5 of all Beauty and the Beast eBooks and #15 of all Beauty and the Beast books, regardless of format.

In May 2009, TOUSSAINT! by pioneering author and social commentator David Toussaint was published. Last month, twenty-five months after its release as an Amazon eBook, TOUSSAINT! was ranked as a Bestseller by Amazon rising to #8 in the Kindle Pop Culture category.

In October 2009, Schiller & Wells, Ltd. published FORTY YEARS LATER by debut author Steven Jay Griffel, about a Baby Boomer’s reflection of the Woodstock Festival, lost love and missed opportunities. Most interestingly, two recurring themes have emerged over the twenty-one months since its publication, as reflected in the 40 customer reviews posted by the public on the Amazon page for this book – 1) the nostalgia of the Boomers in looking back at their lives over the past forty years is more than just a fleeting idea; and, 2) many first-time digital book readers bought this book and not only enjoyed reading it, but also enjoyed reading it as an eBook. The outpouring of positive reader sentiment catapulted FORTY YEARS LATER in June 2011 to be the #1 Top Rated Amazon eBook in Romantic Suspense, the #1 Top Rated in Contemporary Romance and the #7 in Drama in the U.S.

At the end of June 2010, Stay Thirsty Press published LITTLE HOT MAMA by Flossie Turner Lewis and Paula Meseroll, an extraordinary autobiography of a woman who was born into a traveling minstrel family in 1933 during the depths of the Depression. It is a story of a woman of strength and determination, a talented performer and jazz singer and a woman who raised five children on her own, despite the fact that she could not read or write. At the age of 65, however, she changed her life, enrolled in high school, learned to read and received her diploma when she was 73. In June 2011, a year after publication of this book, Amazon ranked it as the #1 Top Rated eBook in the Literacy category.

Under the traditional mass-market/physical book/retail store model, these books would have long been relegated to the dustbin or ground into pulp. The clock would have run them out of existence and the brutal turnover at retail stores would have prevented them from finding their audience. Under the digital model, however, time is on the side of great books with the right stuff, especially where a publisher has the ability to keep spreading the word. Of course, the opposite is also true. Books without the right stuff can be found and the public can and will vote, but the results will not be pretty.

We are living at a moment in time second only to the early days of Gutenberg’s revolutionary invention. The democratization of distribution of the written word via the digital book format is one of those transformative events that historians will write about for decades to come because the transmission of ideas, stories and content across a borderless digital world is indeed a development of epic proportions for authors, publishers and, most of all, readers.

(First published January 2009 in Stay Thirsty)

The annual appropriation from the Federal government to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) is in excess of $400 million. There are over 1,100 public radio and television stations in the United States. The original purpose of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 was summarized by President Lyndon Johnson when he signed the Act into law:

“Finally–and most important–it builds a new institution: the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The Corporation will assist stations and producers who aim for the best in broadcasting good music, in broadcasting exciting plays, and in broadcasting reports on the whole fascinating range of human activity. It will try to prove that what educates can also be exciting. It will get part of its support from our Government. But it will be carefully guarded from Government or from party control. It will be free, and it will be independent–and it will belong to all of our people. Television is still a young invention. But we have learned already that it has immense–even revolutionary–power to change, to change our lives.”

What began with a noble purpose in the early days of electronic communication has become a poster child for government duplication. With the explosion of the internet, cable and satellite distribution of programs, cable access channels, internet television and radio sites, webcam broadcasts, Hulu and YouTube, the need for 1,100 local public radio and television stations to principally rebroadcast national programming is no longer present.

There is no doubt that PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) and NPR (National Public Radio) produce superb content at the national level. There is also no doubt that local public broadcasting stations with 24/7/365 agendas produce content that often achieves little or no audience and frequently duplicates local programming done by commercial network affiliates.

With so many opportunities today to consume information or entertainment via electronic media, it is content that rules. People respond to content. There is no brand loyalty to a network or a station. If the content is great, the audience will assemble. If the content is unappealing, people will change the channel. The need to develop and produce new and fresh content is the key to serving the public. A station can have the latest equipment and the finest staff, but if the content created has no audience, the funds to support that enterprise are wasted.

The time has come to stop the duplication and inefficiency entrenched in the public broadcasting system. If Congress reduced the CPB appropriation from $400 million to $80 million and required the funding be used to support only one national PBS television station and one national NPR radio station, the nation would save $320 million. These two stations could easily be broadcast and distributed free of charge via satellite through a myriad of cable, satellite and internet outlets. If any of the 1,100 local public stations want to continue as freestanding media enterprises or consolidate into one station per state, the economic burden to make ends meet should fall on the state and the local communities where the stations reside.

In 1967, Lyndon Johnson’s public broadcast initiatives were bold and far-reaching. In 2009, they are administered in an antiquated and wasteful fashion. Time and the economy have passed the old business model of public broadcast by. With one spectacular national PBS station and one extraordinary NPR station, funding for the expansion of content should come from the public via a national pledge drive. Now is the time to focus on the creation of great content rather than the acquisition or support of more infrastructure. Today’s harsh economic climate transmits a very clear message – public broadcasting must change or be prepared to Rest In Peace.

Thirsty caught up with acclaimed novelist Pamela Ditchoff at her home in Liverpool, Nova Scotia for a brief interview about her third novel, Mrs. Beast. Ms. Ditchoff has a distinguished writing career and has received many literary awards, including the Chicago Review Award for Fiction. She was named a leading author and poet by Who’s Who in Writers, Editors & Poets: United States & Canada. A Michigan native with a B.A. and an M.A. from Michigan State University, Ms. Ditchoff now lives full time in Nova Scotia because she enjoys living “in” the weather.

Thirsty: Where did the idea for your novel Mrs. Beast come from?

Pamela Ditchoff:  The idea sprung from a comment made by a student in one of my freshman university creative writing classes. The student had used “Cinderella” in a poem she had written. During the discussion of the poem, she made reference to the author of Cinderella being Walt Disney. No one in the class corrected her. Most of the students believed Disney had written Cinderella, and also Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Beauty and the Beast. I had to explain that these fairy tales were collected and published by the Brothers Grimm in the early 1800’s. Of course, this was in the late 1990’s, before the 2005 Grimm Brothers movie starring Matt Damon and Heath Ledger was released.

The authentic Grimm’s fairy tales, the original, not the sanitized, homogenized, edited versions reprinted in American collections, are often bloody, violent and dark. They were intended to teach children lessons in living and frighten them into good behavior. The myth of “happily ever after”, taken to operatic extremes in the Disney films, needed debunking, and I was really up for the challenge.

Thirsty:  Is there a reason to revisit fairy tales today?

Pamela Ditchoff:  Most definitely. There are many terrific modern fairy tales today for children that do not objectify women or set men on impossible quests to win the beauty – tales that do not exalt physical beauty as a prerequisite to winning the prince and the castle or a CPA in the burbs. However, it is important for adults to revisit fairy tales because many of us are not aware of how much Western culture has been influenced, and continues to be influenced, by the dual myths of “happily ever after” and the “makeover.” How many makeover television shows are out there? From plastic surgery to extreme home makeovers?  Everyone loves a Cinderella story.

If you are a beauty, you are automatically entitled, correct? As I began Mrs. Beast, I was thinking of Janis Ian’s song, At Seventeen. The first line goes, “I learned the truth at 17 that love was meant for beauty queens, and high school girls with clear-skinned smiles, who marry young and then retire.” Check in on them ten or twenty years later. Janis Ian won a Grammy, is still touring, and just published an acclaimed autobiography. What about the high school beauty queens? Think about your high school reunions and who has succeeded in life, emotionally, spiritually, and financially. Are the majority of successful ones the beauties and princes of sports or the members of the debate team and Science Club?  Mrs. Beast picks up after the fairy tale beauties have married their princes and we see that they are not living “happily ever after”, not even close.

Thirsty:  Why did you choose such “grim” fates for the great fairy tale beauties like Beauty, Snow White, Rapunzel, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty?

Pamela Ditchoff:  How could their fates be anything but grim when their happiness and ultimately success or failure was based solely on appearance? Snow White’s mother died the day she was born, her father married a harpy who tried to kill Snow White first by telling the huntsman to take her in the woods and cut out her heart. The evil stepmother tried to kill Snow White three more times while Snow White was spending puberty living in a cottage with seven men. Yes, they were dwarves who were supposed to be cute and cuddly and harmless without sexual drive, which is completely unrealistic.  In the original Grimm’s, the prince who awakened Snow White insisted he must have her; that if he could not look upon her he would die. No mention of love, commitment, friendship, and a life together.

Rapunzel was given to a witch at birth and kept in a tower for fourteen years. Today, it would be headline news, camera lights blinding her as police bring her out of the tower, fourteen years without a bath, tangled hair dragging behind her. The witch would claim she did it out of love.

As for Cinderella, just read the original Grimm tale, and I believe Prince Charming had a foot fetish. I chose Beauty as the heroine of Mrs. Beast because she was the only princess who loved a Beast. Once you have a beast, you can never go back.

Thirsty:  Which of the characters in Mrs. Beast do you most identify with?

Pamela Ditchoff:  Elora the Enchantress. It is easier to be a cynic when you live in a Deco Palace with your faithful hound. I love my dogs.

Thirsty:  Who are your major literary influences?  And, how did they influence you?

Pamela Ditchoff:  My strongest literary influence is Virginia Woolf. The first time I read her novels was the first time I could hear and feel a soundtrack. That’s too simple. Woolf’s novels are lyrical in language. The reader experiences not only the underlying psychological and emotional motives of her characters, but the auditory and visual impressions that encompass her characters. The Waves blew me away and I still return to it once a year.

Carson McCullers is another strong influence, especially in the area of adolescent loneliness and desperation, the existential angst—no one has ever written it with more grace and precision. She died too young, after writing only eight novels, gems every one. The Ballad of the Sad Café is my favorite.

William Faulkner is another strong influence, The Sound and The Fury, A Light in August, again, an experimental writer, as were Woolf and McCullers in their day. Also, for a touch of very smart sassiness and intelligent humor, I have to include Faye Weldon. What I have taken from these writers that influences my writing is getting below the surface, swimming to the bottom and coming up with lungs full of hope.

Thirsty:  Do you have any plans for a sequel to Mrs. Beast and, if so, what is that story about.

Pamela Ditchoff:  I am currently writing Princess Beast, the sequel to Mrs. Beast.  Since Mrs. Beast ends with the birth of her daughter, whom she names Rune, Princess Beast begins when Rune is fourteen and has fallen in love with Hans the Hedgehog. However, Hans is transformed, by the love of a princess, into the prince he was before he was a hedgehog. Rune seeks transformation, and to find it, she travels to Andersen Land, famous for transformations. There she meets The Little Mermaid, The Bog King’s Daughter, and Inchelina, among others, and learns of their transformations and the price paid for them. Eventually she will learn that her transformation is dependant on her mother’s secret and the price Beauty is willing to pay for her daughter’s happiness.

PRINCESS BEAST was recently released. For more information click here.

Mrs. Beast is available as an Amazon Kindle Book click here to read more.

When the Premier of China announced on October 2, 2010 that his country would support Greece by buying its debt, the opening of a new era of national conquest began. The dynamics are beyond simple. China has huge currency reserves and Greece is flat broke. When China buys massive amounts of Greek debt, it in essence becomes Greece’s largest creditor. Thereafter, if Greece does not want to “cooperate” with China, the Chinese government can threaten to dump all of the Greek debt it holds on the open market at once and thereby crash the Greek economy. If the Greek economy collapses, Greece will be tossed from the EU and left to fester on its own as it returns to Third World economic status.

One can say that China has done the same thing with the United States by buying and holding vast quantities of U.S. Treasury notes and bonds. On the surface, the transactions are similar. Beneath, however, they are very different since China needs the vast U.S. consumer base to buy the products its factories produce. If U.S. consumers shun Chinese products, it will cause serious dislocations within the Chinese economy much in the same way if China were to dump its U.S. Treasuries. This would cause interest rates in the U.S. to skyrocket, which, of course, would destroy the U.S. consumers’ ability to buy Chinese products. Sounds a lot like the cold war theory of “mutually assured destruction.”

It is not much of a stretch, however, to see that China could “come to the rescue” of the weakest European countries, like Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain (PIIGS), and not risk the same internal economic destructive consequences as it would with the United States.

Frankly, it is time to sound the early warning sirens and call this action for what it is. The Chinese are hungry for conquest and they are headed to the butcher shop to buy some “PIIGS” to roast.

This economic move by China is serious. They have discovered they can be more successful in “conquering” nations with currency transactions than with military adventures. Many developed nations have gotten themselves into a highly leveraged economic bind and if they permit it, China is about to eat them for lunch. The little PIIGS are just the hors d’oeuvres.

Congress declared September 13 – 19, 2010 as Adult Education and Family Literacy Week and “LITTLE HOT MAMA – The Flossie Turner Lewis Story” by Flossie Turner Lewis and Paula Meseroll reached #1 Bestseller status this morning on the Amazon Kindle Book Chart for Literacy.

The autobiography of Flossie Turner Lewis recounts the life of a woman of strength, a single mother who raised five children, a black entertainer who performed on the carnival and chitlin circuits, in speakeasies and minstrel shows, and in the swank nightclubs of Miami’s Overtown where the Turner Family shared venues with other greats of the day. From the Deep South to Miami, Puerto Rico, and Los Angeles, Flossie lived her life as a performer, a mother, and a woman who could neither read nor write. That was until she decided at the age of 65 to learn how. Remarkably at age 69, she received the National Award For Excellence as the Outstanding Student of 2002 at the National Literacy Conference, and at 72, she was awarded a high school diploma.

Flossie’s story of personal courage, tenacity, and strong values propels the reader through eras of discrimination, broken families, and the itinerant lifestyle of a traveling black entertainment family during and after the Depression. It is both a time capsule of an America seldom written about and a testament to one woman’s triumph over adversity, poverty, and illiteracy.

In recognition of Flossie’s extraordinary life and literacy achievements, ProLiteracy, the leading international non-profit literacy organization, has partnered with Stay Thirsty Media, Inc., the publisher of LITTLE HOT MAMA, to help champion the power of literacy through Flossie’s inspirational story.

And, in gratitude for all that literacy has brought to her, Flossie Turner Lewis, co-author Paula Meseroll, their literary agent, Leticia Gómez, and Stay Thirsty Media have joined together to donate 50 cents from the sale of every digital copy of Flossie’s book to The Flossie Turner Lewis Literacy Fund at ProLiteracy to support this most worthy cause.

LITTLE HOT MAMA is a triumphant and compelling story of one woman’s journey  from illiteracy to leading the wave of electronic books in the Digital Book Revolution.

For more information visit: http://www.amazon.com/LITTLE-HOT-MAMA-Flossie-ebook/dp/B003UD7VOC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284388245&sr=8-1