Her words are below:

Dear friends: I’m writing to you today to ask for your help. My name is Rae Deslich, and I got stabbed in the neck at FYF Fest.

It’s pretty much what it sounds like. Labor Day weekend, I was standing in the crowd at FYF during the last band of the night- Death From Above 1979. I had gotten separated from my friends in the rush of people, but that was fine because I had a good spot and the crowd was tight around me, but not rowdy, just dancing. I was center left-ish, behind the mosh pit.

About two songs in, a giant metal spike came flying through the air and landed, point down, in my neck. It embedded itself about an inch in. You can imagine my shock, dismay, pain, etc. I staggered out of the crowd, attracting some attention, and ran into some friends, who guided me to the medical tent. The EMTs there put me in an ambulance, where I was taken to USC-LA County Hospital. I received an x-ray and a CAT scan, and the spike was surgically removed. The final cost: 5 hours in the hospital and $2,000 in medical bills. The ER doctor told me that I nearly died, and if an ER doctor says that, it’s serious.

I filed a police report at the hospital, the spike (I believe it was a tent spike, the kind used to secure shade structures and canopies at FYF) was turned over to LAPD as evidence. As far as i can tell, someone threw the spike: I was in the middle of an open field, not near any structures or scaffolding, nothing nearby exploded, etc. Someone just picked up a spike, said to themselves, “fuck it”, threw it into the air, and it nearly killed me.

A few days after the incident, I contacted the FYF organizers. I told them, via email, that I’d like to talk to them about an assault that happened at their event. They told me, in about two sentences, that I should talk to the LAPD and that they are not responsible for anything that happened at the festival because it was held on state property. (This is categorically untrue.) Mostly I was just amazed that they didn’t even want to know what had happened at their event. I have spoken to both a lawyer and a detective, but neither can do much for me because we don’t know who threw the spike.

That’s where you come in. I need a way to reach everyone that was at FYF and might have seen something happen. There was a person who threw a spike into the crowd- and they were surrounded by people, thousands of people. Someone had to have seen it; I need to find that person, and my best bet is by having them read something online- and tell their friends, and they tell their friends, until someone says, “Wait, really? ‘Cause I saw a guy throw something…”

So that’s what I’m asking for. please help me spread the word. Because what happened to me was stupid and horrible, and if nothing else, people need to understand that something they think is funny and drunk-fucking-around could possibly kill someone. Please repost this, re-tweet, blog, tumblr, etc. And if anyone saw anything, or has any information they think can help: please email me at zapevaj at gmail.com. Thanks.

©2012 Adam Jury. All Rights Reserved.

(As usual, when I say piracy, I mean non-commercial duplication of content without paying for it. Commercial piracy is a whole different ball of wax that is harmful, but not something that I personally encounter in my industry.)

Piracy doesn’t matter because we can’t stop it, and we can’t control it. If you can’t control it, it’s a waste of time to worry about—so I worry about the things I can control and influence:

• Improving my books so people want to buy them.
• Building titles in formats that people actually use.
• Marketing and distributing my works to new venues.
• Empowering existing fans so they want to and can more effectively share the love.
• Continued business practices focused on respect for our markets, partners, and customers.
• Not vilifying pirates; no use making enemies out of people that might become or are already customers. (You would be surprised how many people comment on torrent sites using handles that they use on other sites … including the publisher’s own site.)

And that’s just off the top of my head, big-picture things. Plenty to work on, productively, with actual measurable results; and an ongoing learning process towards producing and selling Better Stuff. Stuff that matters.

©2012 Adam Jury. All Rights Reserved.

Eric Hellman says Attributor eBook Piracy Numbers Don’t Add Up.

Richard Curtis of ereads.com page says: “So, even if one is willing to grant that Attributor based its claim on ambiguous stats, we still believe with bedrock certainty that piracy represents the Number One threat to the success of the digital book industry. You can knock your knuckles on that one until they bleed, we won’t change our minds.”

And that is the difference between believing in the inherent good of people vs. the inherent bad. More people reading ebooks is more people buying ebook readers and in the end more people buying ebooks.

©2012 Adam Jury. All Rights Reserved.

And I said, essentially: “Hell no. Your kids are an important part of your life, and I am your friend. Therefore, I want to and need to hear about your kids.”

And that needs to be repeated loud and clear for my many other friends who weren’t walking down the hallway of the Tropicana at the time: I don’t want children of my own, but I want to hear about the cool, funny, and wonderful things your kids do, and that you do together.

The happiness I see in my friends-who-are-parents is wonderful and most Wacky Kid Hijinx amuses me—especially when they are roughly 4-8 years old and get really quotable, IMO.

I’d prefer to still hear about you, too—I don’t want my friend replaced by my friend’s child—but alternately I also don’t want my friends to fade away because they feel they can’t talk to me about an important part of their life.

©2012 Adam Jury. All Rights Reserved.

Posthuman Studios publishes a few pieces of short fiction via Amazon’s Kindle service (Well, technically one piece—the second one is in the processing queue.) These are short stories that have already appeared (or will appear) in our rulebooks—they’re on the Kindle store to boost awareness of the game’s super-sweet setting and because I like experiments. I didn’t expect to make more than pocket change with them, and with almost no promotion beyond our usual game-related channels, that certainly seems to be holding true in the early stages.

I think that $0.99 is a reasonable price for a digital copy of a short story that has appeared elsewhere. Format agnostic: PDF, ePub, mobi, Kindle, whatever.

Here’s some fun stuff I’ve learned:

• If you publish via Amazon’s Digital Text Platform, you have two royalty choices: 35% and 70%.
• If you want 70% royalties, Amazon will deduct an additional service charge per download. In my tests, it was only $0.01 for a relatively small file.
• If you want 70% royalties, you have to set the desired sale price to $2.99 or greater. If Amazon decides to sell lower than your desired sale price, you get 70% of the actual sale price. If your royalties are 35%, you get 35% of the desired sale price or the actual sale price, whichever is higher.
• If you price your desired sale price to $0.99, Amazon will honor that price in the USA, but not internationally. It will automatically bump the price up to $2.99 in non-USA markets. If you bump your desired sales price up a little bit, the international price will get bumped, also. (I tried to see if a slightly-higher USA price would convince Amazon’s algorithms to lower the international price, with the USA dollars subsidizing the international costs. No luck.)
• You get sales reports that include, on a per title basis: units sold, refunded, net units, royalty %, average list price, average file size, average offer price, average delivery charge, royalty total. No other information at all; there are no ways to contact the buyers. These people are not your customers, they are Amazon’s customers.
• Basic math: One sale of a $0.99 title at the 35% royalty rate is $0.35. One sale of a $2.99 (minimum price!) title at the 70% royalty rate is $2.09 (minus the service charge.)
• Edit, DRM: You can turn DRM off. Amazon doesn’t promise that this option will stick around forever. Turn DRM off, unless you hate your readers.
• Edit, Disclosure: The Digital Publication Distribution Agreement forbids you from discussing your sales data and other such stuff. It also forbids you from disclosing the terms of the agreement, even though it’s publicly available!

Open questions:

• Should we price the Eclipse Phase short fiction at $2.99 at the higher royalty rate and make 6 times more money per sale? I like those numbers, but I don’t think it’s the right thing from a propagation/social point of view.

And finally, have some affiliate links:

©2012 Adam Jury. All Rights Reserved.

Please don’t ask questions in this manner. You’re trying to ask a question about the end results but the question you are actually asking is about process.

Some people would actually argue that someone can’t answer that question without quickly considering both possibilities, and so the answer to any “Would you consider?” question is always yes.

Let’s use an example: “Would you consider printing future books in hardcover?”

Before a publisher decides to print a book in hardcover, they have to look at the additional printing and shipping costs for doing so, compare that to the expected sales for the book, and ask some necessary sub-questions: will making this book hardcover sell more copies? Will making it hardcover make it possible to raise the price enough to cover the additional printing costs? Will this actually add value for the people buying the book? Does it conflict with the way that series of books has been published in the past?

It’s safe to say that if you see a book on the shelf, the publisher has considered all sorts of different things to try and make the book more attractive to buyers and more profitable to themselves. That is simply part of running a publishing business. Considering happens a lot.

If you want to ask a question about the process, do it:

“What factors most influence you when deciding if a book will be hardcover or softcover?”

or:

“Book X was hardcover, but Book Y and Z were softcover. Wasn’t Z similar enough to X to merit a hardcover? Why wasn’t it?”

If you want to ask questions about the end result, do it:

“I’m looking forward to Book A, but I really want it in hardcover. Is it going to be one?”

I understand that some people think that asking a “Would you consider?” question is a polite way of requesting that end result: but it’s better to just say “I would really like to see this book as a hardcover. I bought your other hardcover books and want more, please!” (“Please” is still a magic word, even when money and business is happening.)

Please don’t ask me if I’m considering things. Ask me what it took to get previous things done, or what it would take to get the things you want done.

©2012 Adam Jury. All Rights Reserved.

Custom Table of Contents

I want to tag some article as interesting, and I also want to mark an article as “Read and Not Wanting to Re-read,” essentially creating a second Table of Contents with just the stuff I want to re-read, the stuff I haven’t read, and none of the stuff I’ve already read. And yes, after I’ve looked at it, I’d like to be able to mark ads as “Not Wanting to Re-read.”

(In print magazines, I often rip out and throw away pages if they contain an ad on both the front and the back. I buy things to read, not to fetishize.)

Hop to Web Article

I want a quick way to get a hyperlink for the web version of any particular article, so I can send it to a friend.

Better Escaping from Animated Content

Invaders of Mars has a cool animation, but once it’s swirling the double-tap to stop it is kind of strange: it stops the animation and performs the “bring up menu items” action as well. I think I’d prefer a single tap on the same hot spot that started the animation.

Puzzle

I want to try and type the answer into the puzzle!

©2012 Adam Jury. All Rights Reserved.

But this post is about a life hack; one of those little things you can do to make everything just a little bit better. Many of us walk around with our nose buried in our cel phone or other portable electronic device, or attached to our MP3 player via headphones, or both. These devices are distracting and inhibit our ability to take in the outside world … which can be a good thing, but it makes dealing with people you need to deal with that much more difficult, and it irritates those that you deal with.

So when I’m plugged into my headphones or dickering around with my iPod touch or Sony Reader, and I make it to the front of the line at the airport or bank or whatever, here is what I do:

1. At 5-10 feet away, I start to put the device away entirely, or take my headphones out of my eyes. Both headphones end up tucked into the front of my shirt.
2. As I step up to the person I need to speak with, I look them in the eye, smile, and say “Hello.” If they ask me how I’m doing, I answer, and in turn, ask them how they are. After they tell me that how they’re doing, I offer the appropriate “That’s good to hear.” or “Ouch, that’s a pain. These lines do look brutal—hope that the rest of your shift is easier.”
3. Profit! Or Good Service! Maybe both? Why? It’s easy: by putting away your electronic crap and taking off your headphones, you’ve acknowledged to the person that you need to be able to hear and pay attention to them, that they provide value to you. By greeting them nicely and having a short conversation, you’ve shown that they’re a human, you’re a human, and whatever business may happen next gets off on a better foot.

A side tip: If you’re in a situation where things have gone poorly (You’ve missed a connecting flight, your luggage has been lost, your waitress was distracted and forgot to bring you your delicious cheesesticks, etc.) I’ve found the following style of phrase works out really well: “Actually, things are kind of lousy right now, and I would really like your help figuring out what I should do next.” (or: “And this is what you can do to help fix it.” Tell the person that you’re in a bit of a bind, or a bad mood, but make it clear to them that it isn’t their fault (unless it is) and that they can help you. Someone who wants to be helped is, shockingly, easier to help, and most people do like helping others, even if it’s their job.

©2012 Adam Jury. All Rights Reserved.

David A. Hill Jr. busts out some “geek” dating advice, linking to one of the most widely-known articles about “Nice Guys”—No More Mr. Nice Guy. One of my friends wrote another great Why nice guys come last article a few years ago, and I’m going to chime in with a bit of dating—hell, life!—advice that applies whether you are a “geek” or not:

You don’t get to choose what disrespects someone else.

This flows in both directions: If you care enough about someone, don’t do or say things that they tell you is disrespectful to them; and if they tell you that something isn’t disrespectful to them, don’t try and insist that it is.

Yes, some things are stereotypically and generally offensive. There are things I won’t say or do because I consider them offensive—or at least, offensive in certain situations. But don’t ever hide behind “X is offensive to women” or “X is offensive to men” if a specific woman or man directly tells you that it’s not offensive to them—their personal opinion overrides the stereotype about their gender when you are dealing with them.

Similarly, “putting yourself in someone else’s shoes” does not mean “pretend the same event would happen to you”—unless that someone else is a clone of you, they are unlikely to react the exact same way! When you think about someone else, actually think about them and not about you!

Treat people like they want to be treated; treat people better than they deserve to be treated; don’t treat people like you want to be treated. They aren’t you.

©2012 Adam Jury. All Rights Reserved.

Tiff plowed through more than 20 books on the Kindle. At one point in the middle, she read a book on paper (because it wasn’t available on the Kindle) and absolutely hated it. Her commentary was priceless: she couldn’t easily look up word definitions, she couldn’t change the font size, it was awkward and lopsided to hold near the beginning and end, and it would lose her place if she fell asleep while reading.

My ebook reader [a Sony PRS505] is awesome. Not only is it useful for work-related reading [I often put manuscripts on it so I can read away from the computer and can't fiddle with them as I read,] but it has increased the amount of overall leisure time I spend reading, as I’m more in the habit of reading—long form—than I have been in years, both electronic and print.

©2012 Adam Jury. All Rights Reserved.