(Sorry, the first version published defectively. I have no idea what happened. If I had been drinking when I hit “Publish” I’d just admit it. But the strongest thing I had that day was coffee. I removed some paragraphs that more or less repeated what I’d already written for this post. When I added material, I put it inside square brackets.)
So Ted’s latest project will not be forthcoming.
Recently, I had a fairly long back-and-forth about the Internet Model with some of the regular comment makers. I, playing the part of the cranky old man who simply doesn’t “get it,” was standing on the front porch screaming at the kids to get off my lawn while I refused to accept that the Internet Model made sense.
The Internet Model (according to its supporters) provides everyone a way to stick it to the corporations and their horrible products. Movie tickets are too expensive, concession stands charge way too much for popcorn, (and I’m the one who’s the old man?), so download for free. No one who doesn’t deserve it will get hurt.
A similar argument was made about music and the other main forms of media. The artists, if they’re making good music or good books, won’t lose because people who admire the artists’ works will buy things from the artists — T-shirts, credible default swaps, hair — and it will all, fiscally and karmically, balance out in the end.
Attempts to explain that a lot of other people besides the artist are necessary for the artist to produce the finished product were, similarly, just crazy old me not understanding how things work now. Sad old Alex the Tired. Time to send you to the old folks’ home, where the surly staff, making not enough to live on, will slap the sass out of you in no time flat. Don’t bother taking your iPod though, they’ll steal that within the first two days.
And now, in a particularly undesirable way, more evidence of how the Internet Model arguments simply don’t hold up comes along. Ted has a convincing record of writing worthwhile books. He’s been a cartoonist for years and years. Anyone who has gone through a bookstore can point to dozens and dozens of examples of less-worthy books that get published all the time. Why? Because it’s what people want to read. A paralogical evasion. Ted’s books occupy a niche that isn’t filled by a hundred different people. And they are on important matters. By any reasonable standard, Ted’s book ideas should be able to find a publisher [because they are not books that have plenty of other suppliers].
The publishers are scaling back, and the market for what Ted’s writing can’t compete, sizewise, with, say, dog memoirs or cookbooks. Newspapers, magazines, books, you name it, the information creators are still cutting back, and as they contract, each Internet [author or website keeps taking the final product and putting it out for free. Thus, the newspapers, magazines, etc., have to keep cutting.] If a million people buy the latest Dog Whisperer piece of crap, about 10,000 will probably buy the sort of book Ted would write. Mathematically, it’s almost a foregone conclusion.
The point is that Ted (and writers, editors, factcheckers, photographers, etc. — pretty much everyone who used to work at a print daily or weekly, a monthly magazine, or even a publishing house) are up against an opponent that can’t be stopped. [And that Ted can’t get funding for a project is a pretty disturbing trend.]
19 Comments.
So your argument is that because the public didn’t support something they aren’t interested in (There is little to no market for revolution, thank the Lord. Ted should’ve known that before going in.) the internet model is a failure? No, that doesn’t wash.
That’s the thing about getting support from the public- you have to provide them with an idea worth supporting. The idea is the clear failure here, not the system. There are literally dozens of books that Ted could’ve written that I have no doubt would’ve gotten fully funded.
He chose to write about something there isn’t a market for. The failure is clearly his.
@whimsical: Care to name some of those “dozens”? Seriously, I can use the ideas.
Some of us thought that Vietnam was wrong, that our government leaders were ignoring the will of the American people to put money in their own pockets. We were the ones who were wrong. The American voters ‘knew’ that, had Chamberlain stood up to Hitler in ’38, the BEF would have decisively defeated the Nazis and WWII would have been averted. And they ‘knew’ that, if the US didn’t stand up to the Commies in Vietnam, we’d all have to queue for bread, and meat would not be available.
Now, the majority are closer to the right-wingnuts than they are to Mr Rall.
It’s not the Internet. If it were not for the Internet, no one would publish his books. He can POD publish for free to Kindle, but I can’t see much chance he’ll have a best seller.
If Mr Rall wants suggestions, I quote from the opening line of Pharmacology by Christopher Herz:
If you have advice that would help sensible liberals get elected to political office, I’d fund that.
If you could eloquently explain the alternatives to war, torture, etc. (i.e., our current foreign policy), I’d fund that. I am not looking for a book that equates war and torture, etc. with badness — there are many such books. I am looking for a book that explains the alternatives, so I can hand it to my conservative brother-in-law when he says “yeah, it’s bad, but we have no better choice” or “yeah, it’s bad, but it is better than doing nothing.”
@Lee:
Such a book would be pure fiction.
The system will no longer allow “sensible liberals” to get elected to high office. Haven’t you noticed what happens in the primaries?
Um… let me see.
If you think that your book could have sold 10,000 copies, and you were looking for a publisher that was willing to give you a $40,000.00 advance… that would mean a $4.00 royalty per copy. Now, being optimistic and assuming that you are getting 10% of SRP you would have to price the book at $40.00, and somehow I don’t think that would work, not with the economy in the shape it is.
Of course, maybe when you speak of 10,000 copies you are being overly-cautious, maybe your book could have sold twice as many copies. That would mean its retail price could have been brought down to a far more realistic $20.00 (okay, $19.95). That’s more like it!
Still, for a publishing company an advance is a sort of bet, and it would be foolish to bet the amount you can expect to win In the real world advances are never more than the royalties that would be due for the sale of 50% of estimated copies, and those advances are usually closer a fraction of that… but as I said, I’m being charitable here, so let’s go with that 50%.
In other words, what we have is that it would be hard for a publisher to justify an advance of $40,000.00 on a book it doesn’t expect to sell at least 40,000 copies. You say that your book could have sold 10,000 copies.
Yes, I can see why the publishers’ refusal to take on such a project proves both the existence of a vast right wing conspiracy to silence you, and the failure of the internet model!
@rbdgrl: I don’t think I implied the existence of a secret conspiracy. Actually, capitalism is brazen.
Book sales are closely tied to promotion. A book aggressively pushed to TV, radio and print will sell more copies than one that isn’t. People buy what they’re told to buy–usually.
This is where the pernicious nature of the system comes into play.
There isn’t much point promoting a book if media gatekeepers like Jon Stewart refuse to book the author. And that’s the thing: they won’t. Quality is irrelevant. It’s politics. They won’t book a radical author. Period.
Which is why leftie books don’t sell as well as rightie ones, which “liberals” like Stewart aggressively promote. How many times has William Crystal been on that show? It’s not because he’s charming or erudite.
If you want the people’s money, then you have to give the people what they want. I am a big fan of your work, but this particular proposal did not do it for me, so, I didn’t pony up.
I would like to see something dealing with the mechanics of the revolution itself. Action-adventure type stuff. Good old sex, drugs and violence. Something that could be made into a movie.
What if a group of gangbangers went into the army, got sent to Afghanistan, established drug and weapons smuggling connections, witnessed first hand how insurgency works, then came home and united and radicalized the homies? Now you’ve got several hundred thousand armed and dangerous dudes, in every city in the country, willing and able to do something serious. IED’s, stinger missiles, machine guns, you know, fun for kids of all ages.
Just like a lot of people have realized, you can’t keep doing the same thing and expect different results, and as Steve Martin wrote – you have to realize when you have reached your zenith or accomplished what you wanted, and then turn to something new or evolve in some way….or you get stale, and then wonder why you can’t keep begging for money and getting less and less. Move over, Ted, or the train will simply run you over again….
The US keeps saying that other countries have restrictions on what can be published, but the US allows Comrade Rall to publish anywhere that no one will read him. See the difference? The US is the greatest force for good in the world. The US can go into Pakistan, offer $20,000 to hand over terrorists, and buy a Gitmo full of them, all guilty, since they all confessed after ‘enhanced interrogation’.
Enhanced interrogation is great. It solved the mysteries of the grassy knoll, the USS Maine, the Whitechapel murders, the princes in the tower, and the arson at an imperial Roman concert. None of this could have been achieved without enhanced interrogation, so all those who condemn it are aligned with the terrorists and want the US to be under Sharia Law.
I wish I could support Comrade Rall, but the US ordered me to pay 110% of everything I owned to my ex-wife, so now I’m on the lam and cannot support anyone. Mr Rall is the most accurate cartoonist I’ve seen these days.
But the US took everything I had from me, so I can’t support anyone.
@Ted: what about the other idea:
If you could eloquently explain the alternatives to war, torture, etc. (i.e., our current foreign policy), I’d fund that. I am not looking for a book that equates war and torture, etc. with badness — there are many such books. I am looking for a book that explains the alternatives, so I can hand it to my conservative brother-in-law when he says “yeah, it’s bad, but we have no better choice” or “yeah, it’s bad, but it is better than doing nothing.”
@Ted How about a book about IRV and how other countries have turned third parties into something other than jokes or spoilers. You could visit other countries, research them, study the nascent IRV movement here in the states and lay out a path to implement those reforms here.
And Lee’s book is good as well- because you see, it’s perfectly possible to elect “sensible” liberals, but most liberals left sense behind a long time ago. A book explaining to them how to return their desires to reality and use strategy and patience to achieve their goals rather than being unrealistic and then stomping off in a huff when their demands (Which never had a chance to be met) weren’t met would be a best seller, I’m sure.
I’d fund either of those books in a heartbeat (in a non-election year, at any rate; especially in a non-election year that didn’t mandate that every spare dime I have has to go to keep Republicans out of power to keep the country alive.).
The ideas are my gift to you. Do with them what you will.
Ted’s project here is really beside the point (although I agree with the other posters who say it was not commercially viable). The real question is, will the internet support a broad middleclass lifestyle, or will it undermine the middleclass?
For most of history artists were poor- well, for most of history nearly everyone was poor. Then toward the middle of the 19th century this wonderful thing happened– most people in the west at least had a comfortable life!
Is the internet furthering this trend or stopping it? That is the question.
So to answer my own question, I hate to say it because I’m a tech loving engineer, but I fear we may be reaching a point when a lot of people simply aren’t needed and won’t be paid. In the 50s science fiction was looking at the stupendous increases in productivity technology was about to afford (increases that have indeed materialized) and 50’s SciFi concluded that we’d all be fat and happy goofing off making art or following other geeky interests maybe stopping into the factory once a week to maintain these wonderful machines that were doing all the boring work.
Hasn’t turned out that way. Instead I fear that we have simply asked a few people to work all the time being super productive and told everyone else to go back to being surfs albeit surfs with TVs, refrigerators, and beat up old cars that break every other week.
Now I’m not resentful. I’m a 6 figure engineer doing the maintenance on the system but many of my friends are not so fortunate and I’m worried for them. There’s only so much food a slow growing population can eat and if 5 people can grow food for 100, the distribution system better require 95 people or all 100 better spend 1/20 of their time growing food otherwise you’re looking at feudalism folks.
Looking at the media industry specifically I’m less worried. There are still uber rich artists: kanye west, Jay-Z, etc. Want to see the future of media? I think porn is the place to look. Porn adopted VHS tapes years before workout videos put VCRs in the average home. Porn was on the internet in the 70s. Yet porn can still be bought in magazines and DVDs and yes VHS. Magazines are really a different product than streaming video. Today I’d guess most porn is streamed through the internet. Tomorrow, most movies and TV will be streamed like porn. But like porn, magazines and DVDs will still exist because they’re a different kind of product that in some situations is actually more practical than streaming video. And the porn industry, my guess is they’re still making bank. News will live on the same way.
Whimsical shows again why he’s pretty much the dumbest person on the web. Never mind the idea about the IRV book (what a hot seller that would be), just take his comment here:
“A book explaining to them how to return their desires to reality and use strategy and patience to achieve their goals rather than being unrealistic and then stomping off in a huff when their demands (Which never had a chance to be met) weren’t met would be a best seller, I’m sure.”
Those comments are exactly what make “Whimsical liberals” (aka, Democrat cheerleaders) totally useless. In short, they are cowards. They are enablers.
Look at conservatives. When they want something, they don’t ask. They don’t debate. They don’t say “let’s take our time here”. They just fucking SMASH and GRAB. They do what they want, because they believe in their principles and don’t give a fuck what anyone else thinks. This famous quote from a Bush insider says it all:
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The aide [to Bush] said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” … “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community
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Translation: “We do what the fuck we WANT to do, and the rest of you can sit around and have your little debate club. We act, you discuss.”
This is why conservatives have consistently steamrolled anything they want into reality. This is why they succeed. Repeal Glass-Steagall? They say “Fuck yes! Right fucking now!” Liberals want to reinstate Glass-Steagall? “Oh, wait a minute now. We can’t be hasty here. We can’t act to fast, because we may stifle innovation! Let’s take our time here and not be unrealistic. Maybe we can get a little reform, but we must give these things time.”
I’ve said this again and again, but this is EXACTLY what dirtball losers like Whimsical are so dangerous to progressive ideals. They are the tether that keeps the left constantly tied to the ground. They are the reason not a single piece of progressive legislation has passed under Obama. Not one. They are the reason the wealth disparity continues to destroy the middle class.
If progressives want change:
Step one is get rid of the enablers. There needs to be a cleansing. Conservatives do it all the time and they’re right. As usual, the cowards on the left don’t like the hard reality. The left needs a cleansing.
Step two is adopting the conservative strategy: SMASH and GRAB. No more apologies. No more pathetic whining about giving things time.
You want a book idea Ted? Write about that. Cleaning out the phony progressives and adopting the attitude that has served conservatives so well.
“Ted’s books occupy a niche that isn’t filled by a hundred different people.”
Suggested reading:
“The Road to Wigan Pier” by George Orwell
“Industrial Society and it’s Future” by Ted Kaczynski
yungturk,
Although I have great respect for Orwell (and no respect for Ted K.), I think your point is a bit of an evasion. Orwell died, what, about 50 years ago? Unabomber Ted has been in prison in isolation for 10 years? 15?
Invoking Orwell in an attempt to analyze the war crimes of Bush, Cheney, Obama, and whoever gets elected next (probably Romney), is a lot like trying to explain genetics with a 1950s textbook.
Each new criminal class needs to be followed in real time. Presenting dusty old material simply won’t cut it. We can’t just keep passing dog-eared copies of Orwell back and forth. That’s the sort of stupidity the Marxists fell for, and look at where they are now in this country. Completely out of the discussion.
Silly, silly plant- as long as you keep making postings that demonstrate the intellectual depth of a mudpuddle, the title of “dumbest person on the internet” will safely remain in your sweaty little palms.
Conservatives succeed because they are willing to kill the country to get what they want. They want Glass-Stegall gone? “Let us repeal Glass-Stegall or we’ll tank the economy and destroy the country.”
Leaving aside the moral and ethical arguments that we need to be BETTER than Conservatives and ABOVE that sort of thing (because I’m sure they’re over your pretty little head), it simply doesn’t work that way for liberals. We don’t have that kind of leverage, precisely BECAUSE we actually give a shit about the country.
“Let us restore Glass-Stegall or we’ll tank the economy and destroy the country.” Just doesn’t have the same kind of ring, does it? It’s counter productive, like all your (phony) strategies are.
The Democratic party does need a cleansing though- of those who are keeping it chained to the failed electoral strategies that ended up pushing the party and the country so far rightward. There’s the door, plant- don’t let it hit you in the ass on the way out. That’d be a heck of a start to the cleansing.
That would kick the