January 23, 2007 by Edward Champion

The Latest in AMS

At Galleycat, Sarah has enlisted the help of Scrivener’s Error author C.E. Petit to explain what the possible Perseus deal means. Petit compares the speculative merger quite rightly to the vertical integration once practiced by the movie studios. Back in 1945, the Justice Department cracked down on the Big Eight studios, who not only made the movies but also owned the theatres in which their films were distributed. This, of course, left independent producers in the lurch. Because Paramount and company had a vested interest in keeping their product circulating, it was clear that independent producers who weren’t operating under the Big Eight umbrella were placed on a second-tier. Since Perseus is also a huge publishing outfit, one wonders whether Perseus will do something similar, should a PGW buyout go down. After all, if Perseus is laying down a sizable chunk of change, the company is going to want to protect its investment. It’s quite possible that this means giving the minority of table placement to the indies, if any at all.
The usually sharp Sara Nelson has a remarkably obtuse editorial about AMS. Nelson is mystified by why everyone is talking about AMS, concluding that the “economy of scale” “may help editors stop worrying about how to get books out, and go back to what they do best: focusing on how to get them in.” Soft Skull publisher Richard Nash responds , observing that Perseus “up until three years ago, knew little about distribution” and observing that “[t]he Perseus catalog is going to be the size of a telephone directory–that is not going to help retailers and it is not going to help publishers.”
In today’s PW, Jim Milliot reports that Simon & Schuster lost a bid on $5 million in inventory. He also offers a second story, with sparse reactions on the potential Perseus buyout. In the latter article, Black Classics Press head Paul Coates says that the 70 cents on the dollar offer would only work with current PGW staff in place.
What does Radio Free PGW think of all this? Holograms of PGW employees are the only option.
The story has finally hit the AP, with Grove/Atlantic publisher Morgan Entrekin opining that the Perseus deal could give indies more leverage, and The Wall Street Journal (the story is behind a paywall).

January 23, 2007January 23, 2007 by Edward Champion

We Pause for a Moment of Geek

The new workstation went operational at 2 AM. Three bottles of beer were consumed during the course of its construction.

My previous motherboard, whom I had referred to occasionally as “Fred,” had fried. And the reason it took so long for me to replace it was because I discovered that SATA had replaced IDE, PCI-Express had replaced AGP, LGA775 had become the standard Intel configuration (with the pins now on the mobo, instead of the CPU), DDR2 had replaced DDR (and more pins had been added to the memory sticks). Even the needs of the motherboard had changed. Not content to merely process bits of data, there was even a voice recognition jumper just behind the DIMM banks that allowed me to order Thai food.

All this over a matter of three years.

In short, after a fruitless search for a replacement motherboard (“Out of stock,” “You’re still using that chipset?,” et al.), I was forced to start pretty much from scratch. The good news is that this new system will probably last me about eighteen months before it goes completely obsolete.

The new box I built is equipped with a snazzy Asus P5B Deluxe, a 3.4 GHz PentiumD*, and 2 gigs of 800 MHz memory. This probably means nothing to you, but it means a good deal to me. I can’t be content to have someone else assemble a system for me. My tactile contact with the insides might allow the computer to understand me and not crap out on me so much. I took Fred’s death very personally. Who knew that our love affair would end in his suicide? I treated Fred very well. I even sang to Fred. And he decided to fizzle out. Perhaps he couldn’t handle my MP3 collection.

But the new box is much faster. It accesses the Internets. I need to tweak a few things, but it currently recognizes two of my three hard drives (and there’s room for six more). I still miss Fred, who now sits collecting dust in my closet with other obsolete computer parts, but I’m hoping that Natasha (the name I have applied to the motherboard) will provide me with a few years of comfort in the late night hours.

The upshot is that podcast production will begin anew very soon because of these developments.

* — If you think I’m shelling out more than $200 for a Core 2 Duo when the price will bifurcate in a matter of six months, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me.