May 29 2012
Tuesday Midday News: A real voucher from Almack’s, another Macmillan publisher goes DRM free,
Voucher to Almack’s | Flickr – Photo Sharing! – “Voucher to Almack’s It was the hottest A-list invitation sought after by Regency society: A voucher (or ticket of admission) to a ball at Almack’s assembly rooms in London. Only society’s elite were granted these coveted passes. To be stricken from the list was social disaster. This voucher to Almack’s was issued in 1817 to Anna Elizabeth Grenville, Marchioness of Buckingham—who obviously cherished it enough to safeguard it for posterity.” Huntington Librrary
Who’s Pirating Game of Thrones, And Why? | TorrentFreak – “With over 3 million downloads per episode, the HBO hit series Game of Thrones is without doubt the most pirated TV-show of the season. Data gathered by TorrentFreak shows that most of the pirates come from Australia, while London tops the list of pirate cities. But why have these people turned to BitTorrent? In a few hours a new episode of Game of Thrones will appear on BitTorrent, and a few days later between 3 and 4 million people will download this unofficial release.” Torrent Freak Personal Note: Read the comments. The torrenters talk about lack of access and censorship as being reasons why they torrent. (as an aside, auto correct changed “torrenters” to “tormentors.”
Why Cheap Customers Cost More | SachaGreif.com – “I was listening to Patrick McKenzie’s podcast (with Amy Hoy as a guest), and they touched on something that I had heard before: when you offer multiple plans for a service, the cheapest plan’s customers tends to require the most support.” Sacha Grief Personal Note: This is inline with what many business owners have said about their Groupon experiences.
Momentum Drops DRM! | Momentum – “MOMENTUM BOOKS, Pan Macmillan Australia’s digital-only imprint, today announced that by early August all its titles would be released without DRM. DRM – digital rights management – is the software used on digital content to prevent casual copying by users. ‘The problem,’ said Joel Naoum, Momentum’s publisher, ‘is that DRM restricts users from legitimate copying – such as between different e-reading devices. We feel strongly that Momentum’s goal is to make books as accessible as possible. Dropping these restrictions is in line with that goal.’ The move by Momentum follows recent announcements by sister company Tor in the United States and the United Kingdom. Momentum is the first imprint of a major Australian publisher to drop DRM.” Momentum Books
Stacked: On Blogging: An Unconventional Blog Tour – “One of the best parts about blogging is getting to know other bloggers and not only getting to know them, but actually learning from them. Every blogger brings something different to what they do, be it by the way they approach writing or reviewing or by virtue of having a background or experience outside of blogging that influences them. It’s from that thought where Liz and myself starting thinking: wouldn’t it be neat if a bunch of bloggers tackled a topic about blogging — ethics, politics, practices, etc. — that allowed them to really share the knowledge or background they have on those topics? Stacked
- Pam Coughlin (MotherReader) on Playing Nicely
- Colleen Mondor (Chasing Ray) on Author-Blogger relationships
- Liz Burns (A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy) on Audience and Writing for Readers
- Ana and Thea (The Book Smugglers) on Maintaining Independence and Integrity
- Sarah Moon (Clear Eyes, Full Shelves) on Finding Your Voice
- Kelly Jensen (STACKED) on Leveraging Your Blog as Professional Experience
- Sarah Bean Thompson (Green Bean Teen Queen) on Conference Professionalism
- Kim Ukura (Sophisticated Dorkiness) on Objectivity vs. Transparency
- Sarah Andersen (YA Love Blog) on Community and Accountability
- Kate Hart (Kate Hart) on Giving Credit Where Credit’s Due: Citing Your Sources
Deals
- Once Upon a Wicked Night by Jennifer Haymore * $0.99 * A | BN | K | S
- Daring by Dee Davis * $0.99 * A | BN | K | S
- Magic in His Kiss by Shari Anton * $1.99 * A | BN | K | S
- Simply Irresistible by Jill Shalvis * $1.99 * A | BN | K | S
- That’s Amore by Wendy Markham * $1.99 * A | BN | K | S
- Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi * $2.99 * A | BN | K | S
- Prophecy of the Sisters by Michelle Zink * $2.99 * A | BN | K | S
- To Surrender To A Rogue (Circle of Sin Trilogy 2) by Cara Elliott * $2.99 * A | BN | K | S
- Pursuit by Elizabeth Jennings * $2.99 * A | BN | K | S
- Between the Sheets by Robin Wells * $2.99 * A | BN | K | S
- Out of Time by Samantha Graves * $2.99 * A | BN | K | S
- The Raven Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt * $3.99 * A | BN | K | S
- The Leopard Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt * $3.99 * A | BN | K | S
- The Serpent Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt * $3.99 * A | BN | K | S
- Lady’s Choice by Amanda Scott * $3.99 * A | BN | K | S
Send to Kindle
May 29, 2012 @ 12:13:05
The Voucher is so cool! And she had a title! I always thought titles were automatic ins to Almacks. Sounds like this club was way more exclusive than I previously thought.
Anyway thanks for posting the voucher. It’s one of my favorite things I have seen on DA.
May 29, 2012 @ 12:14:30
Thanks SO MUCH for including our blog tour in your midday roundup. One tiny thing: Liz Burns’s blog is http://blog.schoollibraryjournal.com/teacozy (I wouldn’t want anyone to miss her post today).
May 29, 2012 @ 12:17:43
@Kelly Jensen – sorry about that. I changed the link. my googlefu needs assistance.
May 29, 2012 @ 12:17:59
@Emily A – it’s one of the coolest things I’ve posted here at DA.
May 29, 2012 @ 12:22:16
Thanks for sharing the voucher! I’ve never actually seen one before.
May 29, 2012 @ 12:26:28
@Emily A.: You had to have “good ton” to be invited. A badly behaved or scandalous peer (or one the patronesses just didn’t like) wouldn’t have been able to get in. Likewise, a mere gentleman (like Beau Brummell) could secure a voucher because he was an arbitrator of taste and had friends among the patronesses. The real secret was that the patronesses didn’t all like each other, and they didn’t act as a committee. You only had to get one of them to agree to invite you and you were in.
May 29, 2012 @ 12:36:45
Enjoyed seeing the voucher. It’s one of those things we read about all the time, so nice to now how have an accurate mental image.
May 29, 2012 @ 12:43:37
When I try to read the TorrentFreak article, all I get is garbage on my screen. Is there another url I can go to to read this article and the comments? is the garbage because my isp is censoring torrents, or just that my browser can’t read the article for some reason?
May 29, 2012 @ 13:13:04
Thanks for sharing the voucher, I always wondered what one looked like.
May 29, 2012 @ 15:37:42
I have to admit I squealed a bit when I saw that voucher for Almacks-for me one of those is right up there with an admission letter for Hogwarts. :)
May 29, 2012 @ 15:40:13
Another cheer for the voucher – how cool is that! :D
Here’s a great link to a comic by The Oatmeal about someone legitimately *trying* to purchase Game of Thrones, and what happened… (hint – don’t make it impossible for your customers to purchase your product.) http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones
And I really enjoyed Ship Breaker – a great, gritty YA read with a touch of romance. :)
May 29, 2012 @ 16:53:28
@Anthea Lawson: “(hint – don’t make it impossible for your customers to purchase your product.) ”
Exactly. I’ve heard many complaints about this. I guess people at HBO don’t realize there are still plenty of people who don’t have cable or satellite TV and therefore can’t view Game of Thrones that way. Why not make it accessible via a pay-per-view and charge a reasonable per episode fee? As someone recently said (I wish I remembered where) most evidence shows people are more than willing to pay for what they watch, listen to, or read. If HBO had released the episodes for viewing they could have made money and made a lot of fans happy.
May 29, 2012 @ 17:25:14
@Carrie: I guess you have to look at HBO’s business model to find the answer to this one. The reason they have produced some of the most amazing, brave television (e.g. Girls,Game of Thrones,Boardwalk Empire,True Blood,Curb Your Enthusiasm, Bored to Death, Hung, Big Love, Deadwood, Sopranos, Six Feet Under) in recent years is because they are striving to create a product that will drive subscriptions. That’s the whole point behind them commissioning original (expensive!) content. Making episodes available on a pay-per-view basis at the same time that the ep is released on cable would defeat the purpose of them spending all that money. Personally, I am a little sick of hearing people blame geographic restrictions or release-lags or restricted release for their copyright abuses. I know that as an author I have a horse in this race, but if I can’t buy a book I want as an ebook, I either buy paper and wait for it to come to me from Amazon or Book Depository, or I don’t buy it at all (which is the author’s and publishers loss). I don’t pirate something because I can’t buy it legitimately. Where would society be if we applied that rule to other aspects of life? Everyone who has a TV knows that Game of Thrones will be released on DVD at some point. Just wait for it. Buy your box set, watch a gazillion episodes in a row and know that you have contributed to the existence of an amazing show that someone had the courage and foresight to commission. Getting off my soapbox now, but felt I should speak up as one Australian who doesn’t think I should be entertained for nothing.
May 29, 2012 @ 19:20:49
@Sarah Mayberry: I sort of agree with you – especially because I want makers to be recompensed for their work and go on to make more great books and movies and TV shows. I do have a caveat though about what motivates people. I don’t think they torrenting only because they feel entitled to want it now. I wonder if people are torrenting not just for access to the episodes but because watching it at the same time as the rest of the world is about being connected and sharing an experience, abaout being part of the conversation and stuff that happens around hit books and TV shows. Isn’t this what marketers want for their programs and books? All the geek blogs I read report on these shows for example. There are some great conversations arising from the episodes that pass me by because I can’t watch them.
May 29, 2012 @ 19:25:47
I am geeking out like you wouldn’t believe over the voucher and have forwarded it to my mum, who, like me, has read every Heyer book multiple times and always wondered what they looked like exactly.
May 29, 2012 @ 19:40:37
I tend to fall into the “either buy paper or just don’t buy it” camp for overpriced or region restricted ebooks.
Television is somewhat more complex because of spoilers. Some people claim spoilers don’t matter, but I would certainly have viewed, say, The Sixth Sense differently if I’d known the end at the beginning. And for many, many TV series, unless you choose to stop using the internet altogether, it becomes very hard to avoid spoilers. A colleague was mocking the recent super-saturated advertising campaign for “Revenge” because the series had already finished in the US before it started here. Often you can purchase the DVD box set before a series reaches TV here.
In many cases, I just read the Wikipedia article plot synopsis of a TV show rather than watch the real thing, because by the time it’s on, I’ve heard too much to want to actually sit through it, so just deliberately spoil what little is left.
HBO’s business model may be based on subscriptions rather than payment for individual episodes of things, but perhaps they might consider making subscriptions available for overseas folk, or adding alternate “show” subscription models. Adapting to a “world culture” can’t be that bad a thing, surely? I would happily subscribe to shows I liked, but as it is, I just don’t watch, and feel rather out of the loop.
May 29, 2012 @ 19:46:52
I think the ‘wait until the end of season DVD’ argument is fine for adults, but for teens … Well, I just can’t see them waiting more than 24 hours before torrenting. Do I approve of that or support it? No. Do I understand it? Yes.
May 29, 2012 @ 20:37:03
Thanks for the link to the Unconventional Tour! Sorry for the confusion about my blog URL; the blogspot one is the original blog, and a couple years ago I began blogging at School Library Journal, same blog name, new URL. Anyway, thanks again!
May 30, 2012 @ 10:45:22
So glad I’m not the only one all giddy about seeing an actual Almack’s voucher. That’s the coolest thing I’ve seen in ages.
Jun 03, 2012 @ 02:10:20
Oh, Jane! Thanks so much for the pic of the voucher. I’ve read about the Almack’s vouchers hundreds of times, but never had a clear understanding of what they might actually look like or how they’d work (reusable ticket for a set period of time?). Before this, vouchers were kind of like cravats to me (I’ve read all those different descriptions of cravat styles, but still don’t have a good visual of them).