I don’t like categorical statements. I mean, aside from that one–the one about not liking categorical statements. I especially don’t like categorical statements about a class of people. I never have, and I don’t think I’m going to start now.

I like to base my opinion of people on the basis of things like how they act, how responsive they are to others. I decide if they’re good people and worthy of my trust based on what they do. Not how they look. Or what religion they follow. Whether they’re male or female. Black. White. Fat. Skinny. Ugly. You name it, I don’t believe in judging people on the basis of broad-based classifications.

I also don’t judge people on the basis of what they do for a living. There are some telemarketers out there who are good people, just trying to get by. There are some pediatricians who are probably awful. No one class of employment is all good or all bad.

And so while, yes, I will say that you should fire an agent who starts a 50/50 publishing venture, I don’t believe that all agents are bad. Far from it. To say otherwise is prejudice, plain and simple. Judging someone on the basis of their actions is fine–that’s not prejudice, it’s postjudice (to borrow from Carl Sagan). You are supposed to be able to make decisions on the basis of things you actually know about someone. I can figure out pretty quickly that a 50/50 venture sucks.

But you know what? A lot of agents haven’t proposed anything remotely like that. And so before we excoriate them as a class, let’s think about all of the agents who haven’t immediately rushed to exploit their clients. A lot of them are passionate about doing what is right for their clients. To say that they’re all a bad lot is just prejudice.

And think about this: before you respond to this post to explain to me why all agents really are bad, ask yourself this: Do you have proof that all agents really are bad, or do you just have evidence that some agents are bad? Because I don’t believe it is right, fair, or moral to judge all members of a class on the basis of evidence about some of them.

No, it’s not anyone’s birthday–at least not that I know about.

Almost two full months ago, I promised you that if I beat Loretta Chase in DA BWAHA, I would give you a short scene between Richard and Smite, one that disclosed all kinds of secrets, some of which you would not be able to glean from either Unveiled or Unclaimed.

Through some miracle, I won that round.

And I have not forgotten my promise. I just delayed it a little…actually, a lot, because what worked perfectly well as a scene to establish what had happened in a key scene between two important players actually needed a ton of research and various other details to make it fit for public consumption.

But fit for public consumption it is now! Here you are: Birthday Gift.

First, I’m over at Not an Editor today talking about my philosophy for reading other writer’s work & critiquing.

And second, if that piques your interest, I have two critiques for charity up. One is at Brenda Novak’s Diabetes Auction here. The other is Kat Brauer’s Crits for Water, where I’m donating a critique for a first scene (about 2500 words, give or take). My crit for Kat Brauer should go up on May 4th, so watch for it!

I’ve agreed to match a donation for Kat Brauer’s auction, so bid high and make me squirm.

I may not have mentioned this particular fact about me before, but my family is amazing and wonderful. I remember this most often on days like today.

Today being Easter.

Ah, Easter. In my childhood, Easter was a fabulous holiday. We dyed eggs the night before and then decorated them.

The dyeing phase was all about bragging rights. How many distinct colors could you dye your egg, given 12 mugs filled with different color dyes? It was also entirely irrelevant, as the dyeing phase was followed by the decoration phase, and the decoration phase was so elaborate as to generally cover up the dye.

We made eggs into sheep by gluing cotton balls all over. Because my family has no sense of propriety, we’ve had Santa Claus eggs (this was quite rude–as everyone in my family knows, the Easter Bunny is jealous of Santa Claus and has been plotting his downfall for years). Eggs became horses, space shuttles, bullets, and guns. They were strung together into multi-segmented dragons.

An egg–carefully dyed a mottled green and brown–could be turned into a tank with some wheels and a gun turret. Black construction paper and a pipecleaner, all painstakingly cut, turned the peach-colored egg of the dying Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader with lightsaber. I remember one time I built an eight-inch high gallows out of cardboard just so I could have an egg hanging from a noose. Do you have any idea how HARD it is to make a noose hold an egg? Eggs have no necks. They’re not really designed for hanging. I was inordinately proud when I got it to stay.

My mother praised me. How she managed to do that with a straight face, I’m still not sure. In retrospect, my subject matter was probably a little grisly, and more than vaguely inappropriate for the holiday, all things considered.

After we decorated everything, my parents hid the eggs in utterly inaccessible spots. Eggs were stashed inside smoke alarms and ceiling fixtures. They were buried deep in fifty-gallon containers of wheat. Disassembly of furniture and electrical components was often required; it was a boring Easter if nobody needed a screwdriver. One year, my Easter basket was hidden in the toilet tank. Another time my mother hoisted my sister’s up on ropes behind the curtains in the living room.

And in case you haven’t noticed, we decorated a great many Easter eggs (close to 50). My parents never made a list of where they hid them. Easter eggs were the gift that kept on giving, sometimes years after the fact.

But there was always another part to Easter, of course. This was the part that wasn’t about the crass commercialism of finding eggs and ransacking Easter baskets. This is the sweet, sentimental part, the part that touches my heart and makes me think of family togetherness. This is the bit where I share really important life lessons, ones that I will carry with me for ever and ever.

You see, once my siblings and I had found our Easter baskets and given up on the last six eggs, we would all get together and…and….

And what did you think I was going to say?

Of course we gambled our Easter candy. We invented truly elaborate gambling games and machines. Naturally, we did our best to hide our perfidy from my parents, who abhorred gambling, violence, and any number of other truly fun activities. But that just meant that there was no arbitrator in times of dispute.

So when I think of Easter, I think of that really heart-warming time I won 72 jellybeans from my sister. That’s when she learned this very important rule: the house is only guaranteed to win if its bank vastly exceeds the coffers of the players.

Happy Easter, everyone!

When discussing the rejection of the settlement agreement by Judge Chin, Scott Turow, the head of the Author’s Guild, had this to say:

“Regardless of the outcome of our discussions with publishers and Google, opening up far greater access to out-of-print books through new technologies that create new markets is an idea whose time has come,” said Mr.Turow. “Readers want access to these unavailable works, and authors need every market they can get. There has to be a way to make this happen. It’s a top priority for the Authors Guild.”

This is either deeply disingenuous or deeply ignorant. Mr. Turow, let me introduce you to Kindle Direct Publishing. And PubIt. And Smashwords. And iTunes Connect. These are places where authors can monetize their backlist. You’re right–the time has come for this one. In fact, it’s already here, which is why it is happening at an incredible pace.

So, how’d the Author’s Guild do on negotiating the royalty rate? Let’s see.

Kindle: 70%.
PubIt: 65%.
Smashwords: 85%.
iTunes Connect: 70%.

And the Author’s Guild got us…. *drumroll*

70%! Not bad, Author’s Guild.

Except, wait. That’s 70% of net. There are costs that will be deducted–like the cost of the transaction and financial services fees, so this is at least something less than 70%. Still, it’s not terrible.

But the terms that are most damaging to authors are buried after the royalty rate. Those are the terms that allow Google to set any price it wants, so long as it pays you the royalty on the List Price you have set internally. Yes, you can set your price to any price point. But Google has the right to discount off the price that you set.

Why is that worrying? Because in order to get Amazon’s 70% revenue, you have to let Amazon match prices online. So if Google had rights to your backlist titles, and you put your books up on Amazon, and Google lowered your price (as it was allowed to do), Amazon could match that price lowering. And if Google lowered its price below $2.99, Amazon would match… and you’d get bumped from the 70% royalty to the 35% royalty.

How much does that hurt? Just ask Lee Goldberg, who through a technical glitch had his prices on Kobo slashed to 99 cents, and therefore his prices on Amazon cut to $0.99 from $2.99. He’ll lose thousands in a week.

So if you were a member of the class of the Google Books Settlement, and you think there’s a chance you might bring out those backlist titles on your own, breathe a deep sigh of relief. If the Settlement had gone through, it could have cost you 35% of your revenue through Amazon forever.

One of the reasons I opposed the Settlement was because it makes no sense to set terms over electronic distribution forever when the landscape is changing on a monthly basis. We didn’t know what Amazon’s new terms would be when the settlement was negotiated. We don’t even know what its terms will look like in 6 months. But in light of the massively changed digital environment, if the Authors’ Guild truly represents authors, they need to back away from any settlement that purports to give an author’s backlist to a third party for the life of the copyright.

So look at what Goldberg is losing because someone is cutting the prices to his books: he’s losing thousands in one week because of an error. Now multiply that by the backlist of every author covered by the Google Books Settlement, times the number of authors, times the number of weeks until the work goes out of copyright. Add in corrections for decreased sales over time, if you want, but I think you see the problem quite quickly: This is a massive loss, and had the settlement gone through it would have required authors to preemptively set their prices on the Google Books Site so prohibitively high, to prevent Amazon from price-matching a discount, as to render the Google Books site useless.