Mid-Week Hodgepodge

Tonight was elimination night on American idol. Scott McIntyre was sent home. No matter how much I know these people need to go, it's always sad when it happens. Last week, I was keeping my fingers crossed it would be Megan. That girl shouldn't be allowed to sing in the shower, in my opinion. Then, when she was voted off, her goodbye tribute made me tear up. Yeah, I'm just a mushy old sentimental jerk. One thing though, after last week I've finally decided about the final four. I have a feeling Adam is going to win and I'm beginning to think he deserves it. But I can't decide between Kris and Danny for the number two spot. Danny started off being one of my favorites, but now I'm leaning toward Kris. Allison Iraheta definitely deserves to be one of the final four. The girl gives a solid vocal performance week after week. A final note about Idol. I hate this "judge's save" thing they've come up with this year. All they've done is add more drama. And they can only do it up to the final five. Well, this renders it worthless. In past seasons, all the people who were voted off before they should have been were sent home while in the Top 5. According to these new rules they've dreamed up, the judge's save can't be used once they get to Top 5. So what's it worth? It wouldn't have saved Chris Daughtry. It wouldn't have saved Tamrya Gray. I know I'm leaving someone out, but maybe it'll come to me later.

Moving along... Have you heard about readers boycotting all e-books priced above $9.99 over on Amazon? If not, you can read all about it over on Galleycat. One commenter stated that it was necessary for the publishers to charge high prices because of all the overhead involved and because Amazon takes such a huge cut. I have to admit that my brows took a hike north at that one. What overhead? Once you have a digital copy of a book, there's no overhead involved. A gajillion copies of that book could go out to consumers with no material expense involved whatsoever. And as far as Amazon taking a huge cut--all I can say about that is, my book is listed at Amazon in Kindle format for $4.80. Comparatively speaking, I get paid nearly the same in royalties from the $4.80 Kindle edition as I do from, say, a download sold for $6.00 at Fictionwise. I just think some of the prices for e-books out there is a little over the top, but I really don't have enough info to make a compelling argument for or against. So, you'll have to look at the facts and make up your own minds on this one.

Finally, there's an article over at Writer Beware about self-published authors and pod (print on demand) books. The article reinforces the fact that most book-buying readers, distributors, etc. see all pod books as products of vanity presses. This is a fact because I've seen it for myself on reader forums, and speaking as an author with a pod book that is NOT self-published, this makes me see red. Never mind that there's an emerging segment of small, independent presses out there who are putting out print on demand books, or the fact that these books are NOT self-published and the publishers are NOT vanity presses. As long as booksellers like Amazon--who just happens to own its own vanity press--allows self-published books to be listed for sale along with everything else on the market, the pod stigma is not going away anytime soon.

Okay. I'm taking a deep breath now and calling it a night. Happy tomorrow, people!

Peace,

Devon