I am legally required to tell you that “I was invited to a pre-release screening of The Devil Inside by Paramount”, which is how I’m able to review it before it’s technically released in theaters. Good thing too, otherwise you might actually have gone to see it.

I am not legally required to tell you that I actually watched the movie as research for the story I’ve been working on about Demons and Demonslayers, called Evil Looks Good.

I feel ethically required to tell you that the movie is a joke, and it actually makes The Blair Witch Project look good.

Review of The Devil Inside

Believe me, before seeing The Devil Inside, you’ll want to get a few spirits into your own body. I recommend Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey. One quart should be sufficient.

First of all, for a movie about demonic possession, it’s about as frightening as tepid queso dip. Here’s a hint to producers wanting to make a horror movie: if you feel the need to have something jump out (be it person, car, dog, cat, bird or whatever) to keep the suspense up… guess what? Your writing sucks. Try adding suspense to your script, and you won’t have to rely on stuff-jumping-out-at-you tactics as a crutch for your lame writing.

Also, is there some law that requires indie films to be shot as a “documentary”? Sure it worked great for Trollhunter, but no one fell for that bullshit with The Blair Witch Project, and no one’s falling for it with The Devil Inside. This story would have been much, much scarier if it were scripted, filmed and cut together like a regular horror film, using the exact same resources. Remember, there’s not much difference between a “documentary” and a “mockumentary”.

The heart of the story was not bad, but parts of the story were so bad that they were able to actually detract from the movie and scream “SCRIPTED”. For example, why did the cameraman follow the priest to a baptism which had NOTHING to do with the plot of the movie? Ah, that’s right, otherwise we would have missed an [IMPORTANT PLOT POINT]. Wow. Good thing the cameraman was there, or the screenplay writer(s) would have had to write that plot info into the script some other way. Who has time for that?

Why did a mom have to move her daughter to the basement of the house before calling the exorcists? Guess her daughter’s bedroom had too much lighting and not enough grungy textures and peeling paint in it for an exorcism. No, I’m not kidding. Moved her demonically-possessed daughter to a bed in middle of the fucking basement. Wow, good thing, because that dingy, poorly-lit basement was much creepier than any kid’s bedroom.

And the ending? The audience laughed out loud. And I heard several people actually say out loud: “Oh no they did-int!” and “Aw, hell no!” and there was even one “That’s it? Really? You gotta be shittin’ me!”  Wish I were kidding. It was the cheapest, “We’re out of time, so let’s wrap this up! Cut! Print! Where’s the Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey?” that I’ve ever seen. And the end credits were an exercise (pun intended) in patience, crawling across the screen slower than the credits in Pray For Daylight, and that had to be a challenge.

This Review of The Devil Inside Is Not, I Repeat, NOT Sanctioned By The Catholic Church

So much for the review. The movie sucked. But what I really want to talk about is the marketing genius of the promotional/street team who were on hand to introduce the movie The Devil Inside, because they were far, far more intelligent than the screenplay writers.

Just before the film started, three prim, young people stood up in front of the audience and made an announcement. A clean-cut kid dressed as a priest, wearing a banded collar and flanked by two Polly-pureheart-puritan girls. He produced a notecard, and in a head-down, self-conscious monotone, (soliciting some “louder” and “we can’t hear you” responses from the audience) he read off some gibberish about how he did not condone the film, and he would be available for discussion after the film.

Now these three were even more fake than film itself, if that were possible. He never said he was a priest, but that was obvious. No priests are that young, and they aren’t shy in front of crowds. They introduce themselves by name, and by religious branch, including the location of their place of worship. They know to project their voice. And they don’t read off notecards.

And the Polly Purehearts? They ain’t that pure. I checked.

But, the very idea of having people dressed as religious authority stand up in front of the entire theater audience and tell them that they DID NOT CONDONE your decision to watch the movie? That they did not endorse the movie content?

Sheer marketing genius? Definitely. But I can do better.

Here’s a Million Dollar Idea:

If you want people to remember your movie, you should have “plants” in the audience – members of the street team disguised as regular theater patrons, who scream, puke, and/or pass out at strategic moments during the film. I could have slept through The Devil Inside, but if someone near me barfed or passed out? Now there’s something to blog about!

Remember, you heard it here first. Drop me a thank-you if this idea works out for you.

And don’t waste your time with The Devil Inside. If you want to see a real horror movie, check out The Thing remake instead.

Like the film Snakes On A Plane, you should know what you’re getting into when you buy a ticket for a movie with a title like Hobo With A Shotgun. Unfortunately, that isn’t quite the case.

As someone who fondly remembers Rutger Hauer from his action-film heyday in the 80′s between Blade Runner and Blind Fury, I was saddened to see him reduced to a homeless old man. Furthermore I was warned that the movie was both loaded with preposterously violent content and bad writing, so I thought I was well prepared. I went in expecting to write this film off as one that you could guess your own review before you even saw it, then turn off your mind and go along for the ride.

I was wrong.

About halfway through the film, I realized that it wasn’t just the campy, schlock-horror gorefest I’d expected. The makers of Hobo With A Shotgun seem to be trying for some kind of retro, “bad” cult-movie status, like Chopping Mall or Jack Frost. Or taken to extremes in Asian films like Tokyo Gore Police or Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl. This is a different formula than Snakes on a Plane. These movies have more than just a zany concept, they embrace their own bad scripts, overacting and overuse of low-quality FX, while still managing to entertain. They transcend the standards of normal movies and somehow become “good”.

Like I said, it took me half the movie just to recalibrate my expectations. Once I understood the formula, I tried to tune out the bad parts and enjoy the movie for what it was.

It didn’t work.

Just because I understand what recipe the chef was “aiming for” doesn’t mean I like the way it tastes. There’s just too much unnecessary depravity in Hobo With A Shotgun; the kind of 13-year-old writing I’d expect to see in a Quentin Tarantino film:

• A man dressed as Santa Claus jacking off in his car while watching little kids in a playground.
• A guy who gives homeless people money if he can videotape them getting beat up and chewing glass.
• Topless girls laughing as they beat a man hung upside down like a pinata.
• Feeding a girl’s hand into a lawnmower. Slowly.
• Pimps playing poker for crying girls strung up from the ceiling like bloody cattle.
• A stripper dancing in a shower of blood that spews from the neck of a recently decapitated man.
• A school bus full of kids torched with a flamethrower.

Seriously, if any town was this bad, you’d just leave. And this list just scratches the surface of sick, depraved crimes committed in the sick, depraved town. But fear not! All of this evil is about to be avenged by…?

You guessed it. A Hobo With A Shotgun.

I can tell you that Rutger Hauer is the only believable character in this film, and his acting is very good, even when straddled with cheesy lines like this:

Hooker with a heart of gold: “You can’t solve every problem with a shotgun.”

Hobo with a shotgun: “It’s all I know.”

The rest of the characters are  stereotypes: the corrupt cop, the sociopathic bad guy, the hooker with a heart of gold. The  low-budget, real-world FX were a refreshing break from years of watching CG FX.

The target market for Hobo With A Shotgun is clearly 13-year old boys with anger management issues. They would LOVE this film. But they can’t (and shouldn’t) be allowed to watch it. If you are over 18 and you enjoy Rob Zombie movies and you are willing to explore the depths of human depravity, then you can probably enjoy Hobo With A Shotgun.

If there was an editor on hand to cut the bad ideas and bad dialog (easily half the movie) Hobo With A Shotgun could have been an enjoyable “Death Wish” derivative. But it seems the writers/producers were intent on trading fame for infamy.

I’ve been looking into several books which expand on the Dragon Age and Mass Effect mythoi. And since I recently jumped in on Google Books, I compared the e-book price with the hardcopy price, and made a not-so-astonishing discovery:

The prices are the same. See for yourself. Mass Effect: Revelation by Drew Karpyshyn:

• Physical Book: $7.99
• E-book $7.99

Guess Del Rey Books missed the news that Virtual Products are not Physical Products. I really don’t want to see the publishing industry fail, but if this is your business model, then I’m looking forward to your funeral.

I’ve been coding, registering, hosting and managing websites for over ten years now, and in that time I’ve worked with many companies. Since GoDaddy.com first came out, I’ve bitten my tongue. I understand the need for a provider that can be operated by people without a Computer Science Degree, even if they are the McDonald’s of Web Host Providers.

Over the years, GoDaddy has filled that niche in the market and gone gangbusters with their tasteless Super Bowl advertisements. I bet they are the one of the few web hosts people know by name.  But as Thomas Umstattd Jr. points out in his post 6 Reasons Why You Should Avoid GoDaddy on authortechtips.com, it’s pretty safe to say GoDaddy has gone to the dark side. I will only cover a couple of his points in more detail here, and I can add a seventh reason why you should look someplace else for a web host provider.

The Upsell

Thomas’s second reason to avoid GoDaddy.com is that they are expensive. I don’t agree. Thomas suggests some alternative hosts that are cheaper, but seriously, to save One Dollar and Seventy Cents PER YEAR??? Like I said, it’s important to have a provider that caters to people who can’t even spell SQL. I’d actually expect newbie web-designers to pay more for the hand-holding that GoDaddy provides. Less than a buck per month to keep your name registered is not “expensive.”

However, he does point out that GoDaddy makes it sound like web hosting is going to cost less than it really does, and then they come in with the upsell. This is completely accurate. GoDaddy has become a master of the upsell. Because their target market are newbies who don’t know their DNS from a hole in the ground, GoDaddy baits its users into purchasing services they don’t need. Authors especially are likely to be intrigued by GoDaddy’s marketing, promotional, and web-optimization products which are nothing but Virtual Snake Oil.

Difficult to use

Thomas’ third reason not to use GoDaddy.com is that it is “hard to use.” This is like saying wiping your ass with a chainsaw is “uncomfortable.”  Their attempts to make webhosting ‘simple’ for newbies only make it frustrating for people who know what they are doing. It’s like trying to browse the internet using AOL. Like Thomas, I roll my eyes every time I have to work on a client’s site via GoDaddy.com.

What generally happens is that Joe User wants a website, registers a domain name at GoDaddy.com, purchases a year of hosting, and then….? Contacts someone like myself to “make it work.” Unfortunately, GoDaddy isn’t made for people to use, it’s made to sell extra services. What should take two clicks takes twenty. And digging through page after ad-laden page to get to what you want requires the accuracy of playing a First Person Shooter. God forbid you don’t get a headshot on the link you wanted, or you’ll probably end up buying something.

Hard to Leave

I can add one more item that Thomas missed:

#7 – GoDaddy is hard to leave.

GoDaddy makes it difficult to transfer your site registration to another provider. Although there are actually posts that show you how to get your domain transferred away from GoDaddy.com. (Notice the disclaimer at the bottom of the video.) But be warned that GoDaddy can lock down your registration and make it difficult and/or impossible to transfer your registration for up to 60 days if you make any changes to your account. This may be done under the guise of protecting the innocent from domain name theft, but I see it as nothing less than fleecing the innocent for a couple extra months of name registration.

An Argument *For* Jubblies

Thomas’s sixth argument against GoDaddy is that “GoDaddy Uses Smut to Sell.” Let’s be honest, that pretty much exemplifies Marketing 101 here in America. So while it is a valid point, it would be a pretty long list of products and services we wouldn’t be buying if we used that as criteria.

For extra credit, listen to Stuart Davis’ song “Sex That Sells” from his album Big Energy Dream – a marvelous mock of the subject.

Go Daddy, Just Go

Short version? Go Away from GoDaddy. Honestly, if you can’t figure out website hosting and registration, then you shouldn’t be doing it. Find someone who knows what they’re doing and let them pick out a name registrar and host for you.

Thomas has recommendations for other website hosts in his post. Check them out.

I’ve been with dreamhost.com from day one, and I have nothing but good things to say about them. They offer an insane amount of bandwidth and storage space for a very reasonable price. The bells and whistles are there if you want them, but Dreamhost doesn’t push them down your throat. Dreamhost’s web  interface makes GoDaddy look like the joke that they are. And NO snake oil. Click here to check them out. (Full Disclosure – This is an affiliate link. I get some $ if you sign up with dreamhost through this link.)

Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-X

Remember when you wrote out checks to pay your bills? Those little slips of paper you stuffed into an envelope and mailed off? (Don’t forget the stamp!)

Nineteen Hundred and Ninety-X

Remember when the “Debit Card” was invented? Remember how most stores wouldn’t take it? They called it “funny money.”

Remember when ATMs were going to replace banks? There was going to be one on each street corner (next to each pay phone.)

Twenty Hundred and X

Remember Microsoft Money? Quicken? Programs that enabled you to pay your bills over the magic of the interwebs? I used Microsoft Money to monitor my banking transactions, categorize my spending, set budgets, pay bills, and administrate invoices and payments. It really simplified tax-time.

Eventually, utilities  offered the ability to pay over the cell phone and the web. The gas, electric and phone bills were easy (and most were free) to check and pay over the phone and web.  So I shifted away from Microsoft Money’s bill paying feature for the convenience of paying by phone.

Life was good, until…

Twenty Hundred and Ten

No sign of flying cars, but most utilities have strapped turbo-jet-packs to their service “Fees.” Compounding the problem, Microsoft has discontinued their Money program, and Quicken went to a monthly charge (currently $9.95) to make payments through their software.

Companies have been raising their fees, or charging a fee where there was none before. My phone company, which had free phone-pay system for a while now, recently added a FOUR DOLLAR FEE to pay your bill over the phone.

Four.

Dollars.

Let’s add this up:

• Before: An administrative assistant opens payment envelopes, makes sure checks are properly filled out, matches them to customer account invoices. An accounting assistant keys them in to the ERP system, signs all the checks, and makes a  ‘nightly deposit run’.
• Now: Administrative and accounting assistants are replaced with one computer. Data entry is done by the customer, and money transfers directly into the business account. The company IT guy has one more computer to keep running /backed up  (for the same paycheck)

For this new system they ADD a fee? For a service that costs them LESS to operate? Never mind the fact that YOU are paying them a fee so you can pay them for their product/service to begin with. The price of their service should have decreased to reflect the decrease in operating expense. The price could have stayed the same, and no one would have complained.  They could have added a token fee of a dime or a quarter, even a dollar, and most people wouldn’t think twice. But Four Dollars? This works out to as much as %20 of some of my bills.

Why don’t businesses simply raise the price of their services? I would understand that. But to charge people MORE for a service that costs the business LESS to operate? That’s downright American. Who do they think they are? The Recording Industry?

Going Forward – 3 Methods I Use to Fight the Fees

I’ve decided not to tolerate unnecessary fees any longer. Here’s a handful of ways I have changed my system and saved myself over $400 per year:

1. No longer using payment types that require a “fee” – I will not pay fees to my utilities so that I can pay them… by phone or any other method. I actually considered sending them physical checks out of spite (even though those do set me back the price of a stamp.) Fortunately for them, my bank has a free online bill payment system.
2. Categorizing and Budgeting with Mint.com – I’ve read a lot of good things about mint.com, and the fact that they were purchased by Intuit (makers of Quicken) makes them even more attractive. Mint.com is a “read only” service, meaning it can only pull information from your accounts, it can’t move money around, or send money from your accounts. In that respect it’s very safe, but at the same time, it’s very limiting. If I trust a service enough to give them my account login credentials, then I would also trust them to make transfers at my request. So mint.com is worthless for bill paying and it won’t do invoicing, but it has plenty of features to help categorize my expenses for tax time, and set budgets and analyze spending patterns.
3. Invoicing using Freshbooks.com – I only have a handful of clients, so I can invoice using Freshbooks.com for free. Freshbooks.com is extremely intuitive and dead simple to use.

By using these three methods, I’m saving myself the cost of a Microsoft Money upgrade each year (around $80) and $32 per month in unnecessary “fees”. That’s not enough to save up for a flying car, but since I don’t think we’ll get any flying cars before the end of the world in 2012, I can still use that $400 for something to make the most of the short time left to this planet.

Got any other Fee Killing Tips? Drop them in the comments. And check out MSN’s list of fees that are even more outrageous than the pay-so-you-can-pay fees.

Yours Darkly,
-Z

The Future of #TwitterRebellion

The Devolution of Twitter

The creators of Twitter will tell you that they didn’t know what the hell it was for when they released it. They created a way to send a txt message to the world and watched to see how people would use it.

Like several people I’ve dated, Twitter is fast and easy. The microblogging and public text-chat format is perfect for sharing links, updating status, asking questions or blurting out random props that don’t require the treatment of a fully-formed blog post. Way back in Feb 2009, I guessed what twitter might evolve into.

Unfortunately, twitter didn’t evolve. It devolved.

Automatic for the Tweeple

Automation is one of the cool things twitter had going for it. The open-source platform allows companies like youtube, myspace, facebook and others to tie in to your twitter account and auto-post tweets for you. In fact, this blog post here at conradzero.com will auto-post a link to twitter through the twitterfeed service. Saves me the time and effort of doing it myself. Coolness, right?

Kind of.

Automation is one of the suck things that is killing twitter. The open-source platform allows people to upload a spreadsheet of 10,000 senseless posts which automatically post to twitter on a schedule of about once per second. While the posts on twitter were already nearly mindless bits of fluff, now accounts drown twitter in completely mindless bits of fluff. The goal of these New Media Spambags is to post as many times as inhumanly possible. Post more = get seen more. Get seen more = get followed more. More followers = bigger market for your advertising messages.

Does this work? Of course it does.

Does it suck? Of course it does.

And of course, twitter only encourages that you follow people with lots of followers, because…that’s how you get more followers.

Invasion of The New Media Spambags

Classic Automated Twitter Spambaggery - Note he admits the pic isn't his either!

Of course the people who wreck almost all online things are those who REALLY REALLY want to sell you something. Whether their product is good or not is irrelevant – getting it out in front of people is all they care about. Using the automation I mentioned before, these Twitter Spambags stream continual posts – jokes, quotes, facts… and of course, repeated references to their product.

These are the same douchebags who use e-mail SPAM to sell their products. The idea is the same; a high volume of public contact will lead to a small percentage of click-thru, which leads to an even smaller percentage of sales. The higher the quantity of contact, the larger the number of click-thru, the larger the number of sales.

I’ve included a screenshot of just such a Twitter Spambag. No particular reason I’m picking on this person, there’s thousands of profiles just like this one. But here’s some tips on how to spot a Spambag in the wild.

First, note the frequency of posts. No human can write consistent posts like this every three minutes (Exactly three minutes apart, mind you.)

Second, note the content of the posts. Two tweets of generic quotes or factoids, then every third post is a link to a “Make Money Now” page. Because links take up part of the precious 140 character twitter-post limit, services are used to shorten the post down to a smaller size. Because of the shortening, the links are hidden and you can’t see where they go until you click on them.  But notice that the link in the first post is repeated in the last post. If you scrolled down the list of tweets, you would see this particular Spambag alternating between two links over and over.

Third, note where the posts originate. In this case, they all come from API, meaning they are being sent through a third-party service. Likely, an automated one.

This is another spam artist turning the new social media into a quagmire of auto-babble. Is this illegal? Of course not. But it’s also not illegal for people like this to starve to death because no one buys their shit.

#TwitterRebellion - Putting Twitter Spambags Out Of Our Misery since 2009.

#TwitterRebellion – Block the Twitter Spambags

If no one clicked on the SPAM e-mails and if no one clicked their links and if no one bought the crap they sell, e-mail SPAM would stop. E-mail SPAMmers only continue to send e-mail SPAM because it works.

If no one followed the Spambags on Twitter and no one clicked their links, twitter spam would stop. Twitter Spambags only continue to spam twitter because it works.

Why follow Spambags? It’s time to take Twitter back to the Tweeple. But how?

Simple.  Block the fucking spambags.

If you see someone you’re following post once per minute of all hours, check their profile page and look through their tweets. If they are interlacing mindless quotes and jokes between links to their snake oil, Use the “Block and Report SPAM” feature. If enough people call a spammer on their BS, their account will be pulled, and you will have done a great public service.

It’s not hard to tell a human from a Spambag.  Follow the humans. Block the spambags. Rebel and take back twitter!

Yours Darkly,
Conrad Zero

Getting your book printed is easy. I just did a blog post about Print On Demand technology called ‘You must be *THIS TALL* to Publish‘ which gives a glossy overview of the process.

Like I said, getting your book printed is easy. But getting it to the people, you are gonna need some help. For marketing and distribution of books today, Amazon.com is the King – and according to Writers Weekly, the King just laid down the law:

Thou shalt have no other POD service providers before me.

Now if you want to release your POD book on Amazon, it must be printed on *their* POD service provider, called BookSurge. Of course, the whole POD industry is in an uproar because Amazon realized they could in-source the POD publishing themselves. Um:

• No.
• Fucking.
• Shit.
• Sherlock.

Let’s see, people step up and start offering POD, and a route to Amazon for independent authors. They start making a bazillion dollars, proving a huge ROI. Amazon says, “Thanks for verifying there’s a market, now we’ll do it ourselves. Blow us.”

The only surprise here is that anyone is surprised.

You can listen to Amazon.com corporate execs blow smoke up your ass here. They claim it’s all about making the process faster which is complete and utter bullshit. PODs can take the order from Amazon and drop ship direct to the customer, so ‘making the process faster’ is a flat-out lie. But there’s no lie about how much $kaching$ Amazon is going to make.

Be careful, some people are mistakenly proclaiming that this means you have an “Exclusive” agreement with Amazon, (meaning you can’t release your book through other POD publishers or other distribution methods) which is NOT true. Mark Jeffrey at the Huffington Post, for example, clearly DID NOT read the entire release from amazon which can be found here.

The agreement is Non-Exclusive, meaning you can still send your POD works through other POD presses, but if you want to sell those copies through Amazon, you will have to have a minimum quantity (as few as five copies) printed and sent to Amazon for stocking through Amazon’s “Advantage Program”. You can also release POD through Amazon/BookSurge, AND through as many other POD or traditional publishers as you like. You just can’t tie Amazon orders to your POD publisher anymore. You wanna do POD on Amazon? You gotta use BookSurge, and you are going to pay whatever they want.

Sounds evil, but it’s just a smart business move for Amazon to eliminate the middlemen. A clever businessperson would have seen this coming. Another clever businessperson would see this as the opportunity to step in and take the place of the ‘Old’ Amazon business model. Those people who were riding the POD gravytrain and just got put out of business because they put all their eggs in the Amazon basket can shut the fuck up and take this time of unemployment to take a class on simple business economics and market trend analysis.

Art Is Resistance
-Zero

The Vanity of the Press

Back in the day, anyone with personal issues, a typewriter, and a couple thousand dollars could become a ‘published’ author. Simply take your masterpiece to the printer (nicknamed a Vanity Press), and pay them to print you a truckfull of books. Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy, right?

Right.

So, you ended up with a truckfull of books that sat in your garage. You gave one to your Mom, sold a handful to friends and family, gave away more copies as Christmas Gifts, and a year or two later you had….

…a truckfull of books sitting in your garage.

The Demand on Print

Fast-Forward to 2008, and although we don’t have any flying cars yet, we have made some fabulous advances in print technology. Digital printing technology has made short runs of books profitable, as little as ONE copy. Pay a setup fee and upload your masterpiece to the publisher over the internet, then order as many (or as few) copies as you need, as often as you need, whenever you need them. No stocking. No warehousing.

So thanks to the technology/business model of Print On Demand, anyone with personal issues, a personal computer and a couple hundred dollars can become a ‘published’ author, and they still have room in the garage to park their car.

Obviously, many authors who subjected themselves to the traditional publishing system (and succeeded) resent this new system that lets everyone in regardless of quality. They worked hard to get into the publishing pool, and it pisses them off to see the gates wide open and people of all heights and talents jumping in. They would argue that the self-published author is as much an “Author” as someone who buys a medical degree online is a “Doctor”. They equate this new system of Print on Demand with the old Vanity Press publishing.

There are similarities. There are differences. But what’s pointed out by advocates of the traditional system is that there is no “approval” or “acceptance” of the material with POD or Vanity Presses. I’ll point out that there is no proof that this acceptance procedure makes for better books, but I can sympathize with authors who worked their tail off to find an agent who worked their tail off to get a manuscript published, and now the market has turned into a free-for-all with this new combination of POD/Internet.

And publishers? They see the new system as a threat. And rightfully so, as I discovered…

The Unfair Book Fair

Last weekend I was at an Author’s Book Fair, and I watched a panel of publishers discussing POD publishing. You can probably guess what they had to say. Their mantra was, “You get what you pay for.” They poked fun at the quality, and they cried about how the POD business is cutting into the Real Publisher’s market.

Then they quickly shifted the talks to how to “bypass” the wretched POD methods and run your manuscript down the traditional route. They proceeded to tell a roomful of hopeful writers how their books weren’t going to be published without some sort of track record, a platform, an image, a marketing plan, and a visionary (or what *the publishers* thought was visionary) manuscript. One even suggested that they expect the author to shoulder the financial burden of the initial printing. (Um… wouldn’t that turn them into a vanity press?)

What I didn’t hear was the POD businesses representing their side of the story, probably because they weren’t invited to attend the panel.

Do the Math

So, let’s add this up – independent artists, working around the existing system by directly targeting their audience through the internet with product of questionable quality, and undercutting an industry which only exists by selling other people’s work?

Wow, are we talking about the publishing industry, or the music industry?

Turns out the two industries really aren’t so different. Getting a book deal with a publisher is similar to getting a record deal with a label. The contracts and advances are based on the same business model. Those with the marketing money and distribution connections make the rules, and they pick what they think will sell. The handful of Stephenie Meyers and JK Rowlings make up for the hundreds of hacks like Conrad Zero who should be thankful the publisher was willing to lose money just looking at their mid-list manuscript.

Meanwhile, the internet came along, gave the authors the power to market and distribute themselves, turning Publishers into middlemen who now hold panels telling people not to publish themselves, but that they have a snowball’s chance in Hell to cut a deal with a real publisher. And if they actually get offered a publishing deal? Well, they better be ready to cut off their own genitalia and sell their own kin for a chance at the big time.

And, um… where does that leave me?

For a while there, I was torn about how to proceed with my own writings. I was waffling about getting an agent, and all the work that the traditional publishing route involves. Making the connection between the Publishing Industry and the Recording Industry made this decision a little easier, and the options now are a little clearer.

• I can set up my own publishing company and order books via Print On Demand. Bar codes, invoicing, book keeping, and Schedule Cs don’t frighten me, so this is probably the best option for me at this time.
• I can also choose to approach smaller, Independent Publishers on my own. I’m not likely to find one interested in my work, but there are a few indie publishers worth their salt.

Either way, I still have a lot of work ahead of me.

And to the “panel” of “professionals,” I’m disappointed. You meet to rail on your enemies, but don’t even have the balls to invite them to defend themselves? This just advertises your fear and your cowardice. You harp on the negatives of POD, and ignore the advantages,  then turn around and tell potential authors that we should sell our souls to you for the honor of a form rejection letter?

Consider this your form rejection letter from me: you can suck my dick. I’ll make my own way. Thanks for the advice.

Art Is Resistance
-Zero

A few years ago the recording industry (known as the RIAA, and more specifically comprised of Warner, EMI and Universal) sued the shit out of file-sharing companies like Napster, Kazaa, etc.

Last year, they settled for Hundreds of Millions of dollars of royalties they swore up and down were owed to their artists.

But the artists are still wondering where their money is.

Of course, the RIAA says they are ‘working on it’ and that much of the money was used up in legal fees.

So, when the landlord asks for the rent, artists can simply say they’re ‘working on it’?

It’s the hypocritical system I’ve made fun of for years. Anyone who has half a brain can follow this anti-logic:

• Fans (via retailers, natch) pay money to the Recording Industry
• The Recording Industry keeps the money
• Artists get squat, with the few exceptions of those who are uber-famous, or smart enough to hire their own attorney.

So tell me again how the music industry is faltering, and then cry me a fucking river. They are a parasite that people had to tolerate before, but we don’t need them anymore. If I want the new Jagged Spiral album, I’ll buy it from them directly, and the money goes to the artist where it belongs.

In the American Music Business, those who make the product (artists) need to recognize the RIAA for what they are: the middleman, someone who gets inbetween the artist and the consumer, takes all the profit, and provides little by way of value.

Time to downsize, and let them go. Make sure to sue them first.

Once those corporate execs at the RIAA are penniless and living under a bridge, and they come up to you asking for change, just tell them you’re ‘working on it’…

Art Is Resistance
-Zero

KXXR also known as 93X is supposed to be Minnesota’s local “Hard Rock” radio station. I tuned in today and here are the first three artists I heard:

• Cake
• The White Stripes
• Red Hot Chili Peppers

Here’s a question for you:

• W.
• T.
• F?

Thought I had the wrong station until they played some whining, crying screamo, and then some Post-Black-Album Mooktallica. Then I knew I had the right station: 93X! Meddle for Boys in Caps! Crank it up while you drive your 4×4 down to the “World of Wheels“!

Bitchin.

Its bad enough to see hard rock watered down like the drinks at a strip club, but there were more commercials and annoying DJs than songs. Should anyone be surprised that terrestrial radio is losing market share to satellite?

Don’t get me wrong, I think Tool should be played every single day, but the Fucking Red Hot Chili Peppers?

This town needs a real Hard Rock / Metal radio station. Let’s hear some Prong (Did you know they have a new album?) or Motorhead. There’s an interesting genre called Melodic Metal, but 93X wouldn’t know about that.

There’s been some great releases in the last couple years; Kamelot‘s “Ghost Opera”, Blind Guardian‘s “Twist in the Myth”, The Deathstars “Termination Bliss”, In Flames “Come Clarity”, and more; bands that kick the piss out of crap like Godback and Nickelsmack, bands that might even make people interested in music again, but you won’t hear them on 93X.

Female-Fronted Hard Rock / Metal bands are going gangbusters; Nothing Gained, Scarlet Sins, Betty X, and my new favorite, OTEP. These are professional bands with awesome material, and they are even TRYING to get Pop Metal stations like 93X to play them by doing metal covers of pop songs. Scarlet Sins did a cover of “Strangelove” by Depeche Mode, and OTEP covered “Breed” from Nirvana, you can check it out here:

OTEP – “BREED”

OTEP | MySpace Music Videos

OTEP’s remake of “Breed” hit the Billboard charts in Canada. Have you even heard of this band? Of course not, because you were listening to God-Damned-Nickel-Smack-Back on 93X.

When 93X first launched, I thought they understood: Nirvana, Motorhead, G-n-F-n-R, Prong, NIN, classic Metallica, Marilyn Manson…, stuff that made me blow out the speakers in my car over and over again.

What happened? Regardless, the honeymoon is over, and where the playlist for 93X hasn’t stagnated completely, it’s fallen to mook-rawk and screamo. Ever hear a radio station say they needed to go ‘back to their roots’?

Art Is Resistance
-Zero