Is Amazon the Reader's Friend?

A lively audience of readers gathered in January at New York City’s Kaufman Center to hear a panel of four authors hash out the contentious proposition that “Amazon is the reader’s friend.”

The Oxford-style debate, hosted by Intelligence Squared (IQ2), featured two writers arguing for the motion and two against it. In the Amazon corner were self-publishing guru Joe Konrath and Matthew Yglesias, Executive Editor of Vox. Pitted against them, former Authors Guild President Scott Turow and Franklin Foer, former Editor of The New Republic, contended that Amazon is not, by a long shot, the reader’s friend.

The IQ2 debates declare a winner by polling the audience at both the beginning and the end of the arguments, and comparing the results. The side that sways more people takes the cake. Before the debate, 41% of the audience voted for the proposition that Amazon is the reader’s friend, 28% voted against it, and 31% were undecided. At evening’s end, there was a clear victor: the Amazon apologists managed to increase their backers by a mere one percentage point, while Turow and Foer earned a 22% spike, overwhelmingly capturing the undecided vote.

Throughout the evening, Yglesias and Konrath largely stuck with the appealing arguments that Amazon’s low prices for readers and higher royalty rates for its self-published authors are benefits without downsides. But Turow and Foer’s effectiveness lay in taking a position that honored the diversity of the literary ecosystem. Left unchecked, they suggested, we may end up with a book world controlled by Amazon. The better option by far is a competitive plurality of publishers and distributors.

Turow agreed that self-publishing works very well for some authors in some publishing sectors. He was clearly encouraged, for instance, that self-publishing gives voice—and a second chance—to authors overlooked by traditional publishers. “I am not against self-publishing,” said Turow, before homing in on Amazon’s deliberate attempt to eliminate publishing houses, “but if we do away with traditional publishers, there will be a great loss to literary culture.”

Another reason Amazon can’t be trusted, Turow noted, is that it hasn’t even stood by the very self-published authors who defend it so vociferously. Turow illustrated this with a point that his opponents couldn’t counter: although many self-published authors rallied to defend Amazon during the Hachette dispute, recently Amazon dramatically cut the earnings of self-published authors enrolled in its Kindle Unlimited program.

Foer also pointed out that a loss of publishers could mean a loss of the nonfiction works requiring “deep reporting,” work which is time-consuming and expensive, and which can only be sustained by an advance from a publisher. It would also mean the loss of the committed editorial investments provided by publishers. “Writers are the people in the world who are least able to see the flaws in their own work,” he said.

“Scott and Franklin did a terrific job of articulating exactly what we’ve stood for throughout our many disagreements with Amazon,” said Authors Guild President Roxana Robinson. “Namely, that a diverse literary marketplace is a healthy literary marketplace. And I’m personally encouraged—though not surprised—that so many readers in the audience agreed.”

Much of the argument focused on Amazon’s place within the publishing industry at large. Yglesias opened by proposing that Amazon’s massive share of the publishing markets—it sells 41% of all books sold in the U.S., and 67% of digital books—is the result of its superior product. Turow countered that such market power is a danger in and of itself. A friend is someone who you can rely on to treat your interests as equal to their own, he said. But Amazon has “habitually turned on its allies when it suited its needs. Anyone who believes Amazon will wield its market power kindly has not read Lord Acton or Machiavelli,” he continued, characterizing Amazon’s history of browbeating as “a mugging sponsored by Wall Street.”

Reflecting on the evening, Turow offered the following summation. “I regard the question of Amazon’s role in American literary culture as truly important, and I was glad Frank and I were able to make many in the audience understand that Amazon is a Trojan Horse, offering low prices today—while Wall Street is willing to float a company that doesn’t make a profit—at the cost of destroying the publishing ecosystem that is indispensable to authors who can’t write several books every year, as many self-published authors do.” Turow further noted, “You never make all the points you want to. But I wish I had made more of the fact that Amazon actually prevents competition by locking its customers in through devices like Prime and DRM, which means Amazon customers can’t read books sold by Apple or Google Play on their Kindles.”

As the event came to an end, the writers’ closing arguments tended to encapsulate their styles. Konrath resorted to off-color humor and bribery: he offered free books for votes, making the salient point that, as a self-published author selling on Amazon, he is able to set the price of his books and even to give them away for free, and doing do, he has sold—and given away—millions of books. Turow spoke of how, like Konrath, he struggled to find a publisher for his first novel, and agreed that Amazon was good for readers and authors in some ways. The problem with Amazon, he explained, is the threat it poses to literary culture at large, and ultimately to the reader. “I don’t judge these things on the basis of what’s good for me,” he said, adding that while Amazon has been very good to him, “I care about what’s good for all writers.” Yglesias maintained that his opponents were painting an unrealistic doomsday scenario, but that for now, Amazon’s low prices and great service make it a friend to readers

.

Foer had the last word. Alluding to the arrogance of the tech industry’s self-styled “disrupters,” he noted that Americans have made “disruption . . . our secular religion.” This particular brand of optimism might well lead us to a future “that could be wonderful, or it could be a dystopian hell.” Lastly, he encouraged the audience to speak directly to Amazon with their votes. Tell Amazon, he said, “You’re dealing with precious cargo. Don’t abuse your power. Be good stewards of word and thought.”

The audience, apparently, was listening. Let’s hope Amazon was, too.

The debate, expertly moderated by John Donvan, is well worth watching in its entirety. The on-demand version is available here.

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Reading Diaspora Fiction

 Excerpted from: MAGNT Research Report (ISSN. 1444-8939) Vol.3 ( 1). PP: 469-475

Reflections on Diaspora Subjectivity

Nasser Motallebzadeh1, Leyli Jamali1, Majid Alavi1 and Nasser Dashtpayma1,  Ph.D. Department of English, Tabriz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran

Reading Diaspora Fiction

Taking A Loaf of Bread, a short story coming from Stephen Poleskie's new collection Acorn's Card, as an example of diasporic cultural production, it is attempted to show how this approach is used in critical evaluation of short stories. Stephen Poleskie is a Polish American short-story writer who writes in a fable-like mixture of realism and magic.

A Loaf of Bread narrates the story of a Polish immigrant family in America. From the very beginning the reader knows that the family are citizens of their new country but "they were, nevertheless, without a place. America was still to them a foreign country where it was not easy to remain yourself and keep your dignity". Jan Lesnachevski, the father of the family, now a plumber here in America, was an engineer back in Poland. His beautiful wife "Magdalena didn’t teach in a university anymore, as she had done in Gdansk, but cleaned houses for the rich who lived on River Walk Dive- people who thought they were being nice to her by giving their castoff clothes, which she accepted and then gave away herself". Indeed "this reeking and rat infested tenement flat was not exactly what John and his wife had expected when they emigrated from Poland".

What is captured in these extracts from the story is the family's disillusionment with American dream. Jan now thinks of return but "he had written so many letters back, telling everyone how well he and his family were doing - the townhouse in the city, the cottage on the lake, two cars, one Cadillac, and his children in the best schools. The Lesnachevskis were truly living an American dream". Previously they tried to make a home out of this new country, but "while they worked hard to improve their knowledge of their adopted country, its history and its culture, they were forever circling outside". They thought they can be truly American if they master the language but after mastering English with an only slight polish accent "they were however, dismayed by the fact that they could not comprehend most people, especially their children, who went to a public school and talked like rappers on MTV.

Applying the analytical tools and procedures based on diaspora subjectivity we have to see what kind of subjectivity Jan and his wife may nurture under such conditions. Where is their real home after all? Drawing on Mishra's theory of subject's unresolved positionality in relation to homeland and hostland which creates a severed sutured identity, one can see the plight of these people. The rest of the story supports this theory. "Whenever Jan talked about the possibility of going back to Poland—he didn’t say going home anymore as both he and Magdalena were no longer sure where home really was—all his children ever said was: Poland! Like are you totally out of your mind, dude? No way!"

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Mike Foldes; Two Poems

Untitled

i carry the past with me but i do not live in it.

i cannot shake it like a cold, it hangs on

like a hungry tick, sapping liquid from the tree.

all you who are inordinately reminded

of it square off now with your futures;

like the past, i, too, carry the future with me.

but i do not live in it. here and now,

the pleasant state of present unties itself

like the wine-colored belt of a velvet robe

falling open after a cleansing bath.

i carry the past with me; unlike the future,

it will always be there. but the present ...

it’s the present that takes my breath away.

Feeling DNA

I feel my DNA

chattering in the wind,

dry leaves at the ends

of bare branches,

and wonder in silence

at the depth and breadth –

the penetration –

of their serrations,

how far apart the tips.

Eva’s email arrives,

a newfallen leaf

at my tired feet

reading what she writes

of Miskolc, where

ten percent perished,

she being one of many

one of the few who remain,

promising to tell

“a lovely story”

of the second cousin

who converted, the seminarian

who got on a train to Belgium

to find safety

and died in Auschwitz;

of a growing concern 

with her command

of English spelling.

“That mottled leaf is yours,”

says the genomic tree.

This is a message caught

in the whorl of time

and things to do,

overloaded with hope,

exploding with wonder.

Is the experience unique,

will it be shared?

This look, that line.

A split second’s

understanding, then nothing.

That connection knowing

as it slips away.

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Mike Foldes is the founder and managing editor of Ragazine, an online literary magazine.

editor@ ragazine.cc 
http://ragazine.cc
ragazinecc/Twitter
ragazineccblogging@blogspot.com
Join Mike on MySpace & Facebook
Mike is also the author of Sleeping Dogs, A true story of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping
Download at www.Smashwords.Com and www.Amazon.Com
Purchase the paperback at www.splitoakpress.com

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Season's Greetings

Image by Sasha Thurmond

copyright 2014

Jeanne Mackin Wins Fiction Award

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Writers Jeanne Mackin and Joseph E. Fahey and poet Jasmine Bailey are the winners of the 2014 CNY Book Awards in fiction, nonfiction and poetry, respectively. Marianne Angelillo received the 2014 People's Choice Award. The winners were announced at a reception at La Casita Cultutral Center. This is the third year of the awards, sponsored by YMCA Downtown Writers Center.

Jeanne Mackin won the 2014 CNY Book Awards in the fiction category for "The Beautiful American."Courtesy photo 

Jeanne Mackin won for"The Beautiful American," and Fahey won for "James K. McGuire: Boy Mayor and Irish Nationalist."Bailey was recognized for"Alexandria." Angelillo won for "Sharing My Stones."
Three independent judges selected the finalists and winners in the individual categories. Here is the list of the finalists in each category:

POETRY
Michael Burkard, "Sometime in the Winter."
Paul Roth, "Long Way Back to the End."
Jasmine Bailey, "Alexandria."
Poetry judge: Kelly Davio, author of "Burn This House."

FICTION
Ronald Bagliere, "The Lion of Khum Jung."
James Longstaff, "Wapsipinicon."
Jeanne Mackin, "The Beautiful American."
Fiction judge: Steve Huff, author of "A Pig in Paris."

NONFICTION
Marianne Angelillo, "Sharing My Stones."
Joseph E. Fahey, "James K. McGuire: Boy Mayor and Irish Nationalist."
David R. Smith, "Help! I'm Bored in Church."
Nonfiction judge: Sarah Freligh, author of "Sort of Gone."

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article courtesy of the Syracuse Post-Standard

Red in Tooth and Claw

PAUL WEST

an excerpt from a novel forthcoming from Onager Editions 

WEEKS LATER, as he bled through clumsy necktie tourniquets into the makeshift bed of a big wooden drawer hauled outside by the few surviving Red Cross nurses, Ludwik Czimanski remembered the golden Poland of before, and the bicycle festooned with his suits. The land had been alive with doomed people full of flamboyant bad humor, dryly joking about motor torpedo boats, the famous statue in Warsaw of Kilinski brandishing his saber at the sky with a face of invitational outrage, and the invincible yellow-capped national cavalry whose red and white guidons flapped above their heads like swallows’ wings. How uncanny the sky had been, stunning him like a blue gas his mind’s eye inhaled again and again: the drug from nowhere that wiped out the ills of the land. Everyone had looked upward, inhaling hard (at least as he remembered them), looking not for the first wave of bombers but for scrubbed and rosy refugee camps arranged in vistas tapering infinitely up to that comfy other where in which, as legend said, everything went right.

        Now, fading away in the big drawer that once held toys or starched and ironed bed sheets, he wondered hopelessly about his wife and son, lost somewhere in the broken landscape, and the suits with which he had tried to bargain before the Huns moved in. In spite of the smoke and brick dust obscuring the yard of the first-aid station that used to be a school, he could see yellow, green, and pink auroras, arcs and streamers and rays of bouncing pearl, and he told himself it was indeed cold enough for northern lights, the summer was a summer only of the mind. The dusty smell of blood would never go away, but like some maroon revenant had ousted for ever and ever the sweet scent of water the burial service invoked. His eyes brimmed as he heard, at a colossal distance, the lazy swish of intact trees bloated with chlorophyll, then teared when he gazed, with head propped up against the end of the drawer, at the sun lolling fat on its course beyond the smoke and the auroras. I am who I am, he coerced himself, I am who I have been. That much remains, and wherever I go the land will fall away steeply to the pond at the bottom of the garden and the hill shall rise from there until it meets the sky. And now it was as if the colored lights in his head had begun to squeak; he felt with one hand for the other and, in a spin of silly mental momentum, winced at the thought. Which was worse, the gone hand feeling for the still present other or vice versa? To grope for something with nothing, or for nothing with something? It was not a vital distinction now, even though something comparable had gone wrong with his feet as well, where the cold began that bulged upward along the length of him inside the shreds of his major’s tunic. Having gone to war in full regalia, like a throwback to the nineteenth century, he judged he had no right to decide what explosive engine of war had hit him as he galloped south-east from Warsaw, bidding his mother and war adieu to refind his wife and son somewhere in the bloody mark of the small town where they had last embraced, a slewed tripod of love in the garden at Kazimierz, leaning their bodies blindly together while some passing bird, as they discovered a moment later, released a pellet of white wet lime that landed on his shoulder: a portent of good luck at which they miserably grinned before embracing again, and he’d left it there to dry in the sun, like a tiny additional epaulette.

        Assistant Military Attaché in Berlin, which he had been, before removing himself fast, with wife and son, as the Nazi design upon Poland became grossly clear, he had thought as logically as he could, getting them all three out of Germany, then from Warsaw to the countryside on the fringe of an old city on the Vistula. All pacts wither in the making, he’d decided. Let’s make one of our own, even if it postpones an evil day for a week only. Evil day? Devilish eternity’s more like it. So he had, as it were, put away both wife and child, like a cache of gold and cream in a land awaiting heathen predators, and had gone to do his duty with pistol, sword, fire iron or gardening fork, he whose métier for years had been the desk, although he had kept in riding practice at the Krampnitz cavalry school, so at least he would not be unseated while attacking a tank or machine gun nest. Something huge-feeling in his eye, like a reified whirl of light, made him wince, reminding him of an engine cinder which, in boyhood, hit his other eye as he leaned over a bridge to watch a train, and the wince shook loose a few forgotten words, which he lip-formed with almost holy slowness: Poland, Switzerland, Admiral, the suits, the boy, Wanda, the bird-lime, the pigsty, the bank, the money, the farm, the telephone lines all cut.

        It was no use: the part of his mind which identified gibberish and denounced it, pitching it out from his sleek diplomatic-military chessboard of ideas, no longer functioned, and the dead came back to haunt him, to be worried about, even as his conscience let slip the living, on whose behalf he had invented so many paper stratagems, including a small cave dug in one of the ravines near Kazimierz and use of the twin-engined courier plane to get them all away, northwest to Denmark, southwest to Switzerland. There had been no time to make the cave, and the plane, on one of its shuttles between Warsaw and Berlin, had vanished, shot down for target practice by a Luftwaffe pilot on the prowl. Not that Ludwik Czimanski knew this, or any longer cared; his father, who had died in his chair, drumming his fingers incessantly on the arm in a tattoo bespeaking helplessness and diffident rage—thrim-thrum, thrim-thrum until his wife facing him held both of his hands still—came back to life as a hostage to fortune, to be smuggled out by airplane or squirreled away in a cave. Indeed, a line of people formed in his head, his father first, then his mother still creaming her arms with an imported aloe lotion (she who crooned in her sleep, in a half-dream repeating that voluptuous motion along each arm, although untidily), then these two followed by his grandparents, fidgety cardboard caricatures with wolf-head canes and spilling samovars, behind whom came the living such as the Sakals, both teachers, and she part-Jewish, with a single child, a girl sensuously named Myrrh with whom his own dead son had played and walked and (he’d supposed) mildly necked. But, in the sea-changes of his delirium, while the sun of his last day bloomed and waned behind the smoke, the dead and gone did not come to life only when the living gave up the ghost. It was more complicated than that. Instead of life-for-death exchanges, these beloved phantoms rang the changes in a parody of resurrection, and a host of proverbs turned morbidly inside-out: after God’s finger touched them, and they were no more, God’s finger touched them again, and they asked to be saved from Adolf Hitler; in the midst of life, they were in death, and then they were not, and they asked for visas to America. Even worse, while this chop-and-change ensued, blighting with fickle guilt what he no longer even recognized as the drift into coma, he somehow found the head of his dead wife, Wanda, on his live grandfather’s trunk, and one dead grandmother’s arms on his dead son, Izz, at all of which in his enfeebled dither he rebelled, and in so doing rid himself of all categories, at the almost very last abolishing the category into which he slid. And so, dying, he could not die, he had never been alive; indeed, so far, on the planet, there had been no life at all, but only a flicker of a promise decked out with plausible ghostly faces, brought into being by a Creator whose main purpose, initially, was to try out the capacity of humans-to-come to love one another. Then, the test over, these figments could vanish. And they did. One day during some effusive eon there’d be humans. Oh yes, he told himself, there are going to be people, the rocks will no longer be lonely, the water will be drunk, the birds will finally have heads and shoulders to squirt their whitewash on, the first onion will be fried, the hops be brewed into beer, the mice be trapped, the moss in the woods blot the first wound. On it went, a vast anachronistic alibi that piled up the more his blood became a drizzle, the last of it arriving in the open air mist-slow because there was no longer anything behind it to push it along. Major Czimanski died in a bloodless plethora crammed with the evidence of things not seen.

*   *   *

PAUL WEST is the author of 50 books. He has received awards from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the Lannan Prize for Fiction and the Halperin-Kaminsky Prize. He was named a Literary Lion by the New York Public Library and a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Government. He has also been a runner-up for the National Book Circle Award and the Nobel Prize for Literature. 

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BLACK SWAN: a poem, Erica Guo

black swan

It’s been twenty years and you still

want to cover up the canvas.

During the first time in heels,

you puffed your chest out for emphasis.

As the usual, people stared

at the mother and her daughter’s growing behind,

marks of chocolate plumage.

A strut here, a strut there.

And it was almost the routine again:

play with the palette, give up your unruly,

slap on the rules.

Between drugstore aisles,

stilettos clanged against every inch.

I wondered: Couldn’t a duckling enjoy her color quietly?

You stopped short when I cupped the nail polish.

It would pull the shroud back

from your face and toward your hands again.

But it’s black, you cried. Black!

You grabbed the foundation, too light

for your cheek.

You held onto the sick powder.

I forced your hands to your side.

Your eyes stilled onto the sleeve of your sweater.

The smell of Mercurochrome

hunted you on the way out,

through twenty years, til today,

the way everyone hunted dark birds

with their eyes

until they flew no more.

*   *   *

Erica Guo has worked on the staffs of Blueshift Journal and Transcendence Magazine, and co-founded Cenzontle Magazine: http://cenzontleliterarymagazine.virb.com/

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