Saturday, March 30, 2013

Dictionary.com: Solving the punctuation puzzle [history and usage]

http://dictionary.reference.com/

Ampersand

[am-per-sand, am-per-sand]

This strange punctuation mark has a fascinating past. The ampersand emerged over 2,000 years ago as the Latin word et meaning "and." The cursive writing of Latin scribes often connected the "e" and "t," giving rise to the shape of the ampersand. 

The name did not appear until the 1830s when "&" was the 27th letter of the English alphabet. The mark concluded the alphabet with "X, Y, Z, and per se and" with "and per se" meaning "and by itself." This final phrase was slurred by English school children during recitation and reborn as "ampersand."

Colon

[koh-luhn]

This punctuation mark is not to be confused with the end of the large intestine. Grammatically, the colon marks a major division in a sentence. 

The sign may also precede lists or summations or even help to categorize numbers, like separating hours from minutes as in "5:30." The word comes from the Greek kolon meaning "limb" or a "part of verse."

Semi-colon

[sem-i-koh-luhn]

This punctuation mark, called "dangerously addictive" by Virginia Woolf, unites two independent clauses with a common thematic tie: "Leonard had nothing against tigers; he grew up with cats." 

In this example the two clauses would be perfectly permissible sentences on their own, but because they both relate to the same person and the same affection for felines, they are appropriately linked with a semi-colon. The addition of the prefix semi-, meaning "part," to the Greek root kolon meaning "part of verse" makes the semi-colon quite literally a part of a part.

Comma

[kom-uh]

Aside from the period, the comma is the most common punctuation mark in English. The word is derived from the Greek koptein meaning "to cut off," fitting for our beloved comma's use in marking pauses within sentences and separating terms in a list. 

The mark was invented by the Italian printer Aldus Manutius in the late 1400s, a time when the slash mark signified a pause. Manutius lowered the slash mark in relation to the line of text and curved it slightly around the final letter. This freed the slash mark to indicate a comparison and simultaneously gave birth to the comma.

Ellipsis

[ih-lip-sis]

"I think I love you..." If you've ever been confronted with this maddeningly indeterminate end to a sentence, then you're no stranger to the effects of the ellipsis

From the Greek word elleipsein meaning "to fall short," this punctuation mark indicates an omission or suppression of letters or words. Oftentimes readers can infer which terms are replaced by the ellipsis, but in certain settings there's just no way to know.

Apostrophe

[uh-pos-truh-fee]

In English, the apostrophe is the agent of contraction and possession, shortening words by replacing letters as in: can't for "can(no)t," and designating ownership as in: "the iguana is Lisa's." 

The word came to English in the late 1500s as a direct loan from the Middle French apostrophe meaning "aversion" or "turning away." Following its induction into English, the symbol enjoyed extreme popularity in written text, the result of a centuries-long trend to imitate French culture.

Quotation marks

Also called "inverted commas," quotation marks set off dialogue, quoted material, titles of short works, and definitions by demarcating of a section of text: "Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore," said Dorothy, as she opened the door. 

Before mechanized printing, quotations were indicated by identifying the speaker or using a different typeface, like italics. At the time single quotation marks indicated a pithy comment or quip. But by the 1740s, mechanical printing had taken off and printers adopted quotation marks to indicate speech.

Hyphen

[hahy-fuhn]

The hyphen is a short line used to connect the parts of a compound word. It may also be used to indicate a connection between the parts of a word that has been divided for other reasons like a line break. 

The term is derived from the Ancient Greek hypo + hen literally translated as "under one." 

Historically, the mark was used to unite words or syllables, most likely indicating the way phrases were meant to be sung by Greek and Roman bards. Hyphens are still used today in choral notation to indicate connected syllables.

Question mark

Also called the "interrogation mark," the question mark is, in English, the punctuation mark placed after a sentence to indicate a question. In Spanish an inverted question mark is placed at the beginning of an inquisitive sentence as well. 

There is much speculation as to the origin of the question mark, but most attribute its invention to Alcuin of York, leading scholar and teacher in the court of Charlemagne. 

In the 8th century, Alcuin indicated questions in his writing with a mark like "a lightning flash, striking from left to right," according to language writer Lynne Truss.

Exclamation point

This forceful punctuation mark indicates a moment of high volume or excitement at the end of a sentence. Though there is no consensus as to the origin of the exclamation point, many believe that it is an abbreviated composite of the Latin word for "joy," io

After centuries of hurried handwriting, the "i" became a line, placed over the "o," written quickly as a dot. The exclamation point was introduced into English in the 15th century as a "note of admiration."

Interrobang

[in-ter-uh-bang]

This hybrid [double] punctuation mark is the only symbol on our list that was born in the USA. The interrobang combines a question mark and an exclamation point to indicate a mixture of query and interjection or shock, as in: "She said what!?" 

In the case of the interrobang, both word and symbol are portmanteaus in that the word bang was used for "exclamation point" in 1950s secretarial vernacular. Similarly, the question mark is also known as the "interrogation mark."
========================================== 
The beginnings of punctuation lie in classical rhetoric--the art of oratory. Back in ancient Greece and Rome, when a speech was prepared in writing, marks were used to indicate where--and for how long--a speaker should pause.

These pauses (and eventually the marks themselves) were named after the sections they divided. The longest section was called a period, defined by Aristotle as "a portion of a speech that has in itself a beginning and an end." The shortest pause was a comma (literally, "that which is cut off"), and midway between the two was the colon--a "limb," "strophe," or "clause."


_http://grammar.about.com/od/punctuationandmechanics/a/PunctuationHistory.htm

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Fifty Shades Freed Review by Neale Sourna

Fifty Shades Freed (Fifty Shades, #3)Fifty Shades Freed by E.L. James

My Goodreads rating: 4 of 5 stars


For those who chickened out before they got this far missed the healing and the heart opening and a guy who keeps her on her toes "What will he do next?" Why he wanders: "What will she do next?

It's something like 70+ - 90 percent of marriages and committed heterosexual couples wherein the feminine half is bored witless of the repetitive missionary and nothing else sex. And don't know what an orgasm with their love is like. [How to Satisfy a Woman Everytime by Hayden]

Smell the chocolate, never get to eat it. FRUSTRATING

If men want to learn more about women and women about themselves this series, which is well-written, cleverly so, despite the naysayers reveals much about who can read it and who can. We're not even talking about you just don't like the stories.

Talking about hating the heroine (seeing too much of yourself?) or fearing the "kinky fuckery" without understanding how having a choice in sex--Christian missionary ONLY mentioned above--is a good thing.

And more important, it's a book, if you can't put ideas in your head, try them on mentally then drop 'em or adopt 'em, you must be the most brain-washable, easily hypnotized person the the planet.

View all my reviews

Monday, March 18, 2013

Rise of Latino population blurs US racial lines By HOPE YEN | Associated Press

http://news.yahoo.com/rise-latino-population-blurs-us-racial-lines-114944593.html

WASHINGTON (AP) — Welcome to the new off-white America.

A historic decline in the number of U.S. whites and the fast growth of Latinos are blurring traditional black-white color lines, testing the limits of civil rights laws and reshaping political alliances as "whiteness" begins to lose its numerical dominance.

Long in coming, the demographic shift was most vividly illustrated in last November's re-election of President Barack Obama, the first black president, despite a historically low percentage of white supporters.

It's now a potent backdrop to the immigration issue being debated in Congress that could offer a path to citizenship for 11 million mostly Hispanic illegal immigrants. Also, the Supreme Court is deciding cases this term on affirmative action and voting rights that could redefine race and equality in the U.S.

The latest census data and polling from The Associated Press highlight the historic change in a nation in which non-Hispanic whites will lose their majority in the next generation, somewhere around the year 2043.

Despite being a nation of immigrants, America's tip to a white minority has never occurred in its 237-year history and will be a first among the world's major post-industrial societies. Brazil, a developing nation, has crossed the threshold to "majority-minority" status; a few cities in France and England are near, if not past that point.

The international experience and recent U.S. events point to an uncertain future for American race relations.
In Brazil, where multiracialism is celebrated, social mobility remains among the world's lowest for blacks while wealth is concentrated among whites at the top. In France, race is not recorded on government census forms and people share a unified Gallic identity, yet high levels of racial discrimination persist.

"The American experience has always been a story of color. In the 20th century it was a story of the black-white line. In the 21st century we are moving into a new off-white moment," says Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, a global expert on immigration and dean of UCLA's Graduate School of Education & Information Studies.

"Numerically, the U.S. is being transformed. The question now is whether our institutions are being transformed," he said.

The shift is being driven by the modern wave of U.S. newcomers from Latin America and Asia. Their annual inflow of 650,000 people since 1965, at a rate that's grown in recent years, surpasses the pace of the last great immigration wave a century ago. That influx, from 1820 to 1920, brought in Irish, Germans, Italians and Jews from Europe and made the gateway of Ellis Island, N.Y., an immigrant landmark, symbolizing freedom, liberty and the American dream.

An equal factor is today's aging white population, mostly baby boomers, whose coming wave of retirements will create a need for first- and second-generation immigrants to help take their place in the workforce.

The numbers already demonstrate that being white is fading as a test of American-ness:

—More U.S. babies are now born to minorities than whites, a milestone reached last year.

—More than 45 percent of students in kindergarten through 12th grade are minorities. The Census Bureau projects that in five years the number of nonwhite children will surpass 50 percent.

—The District of Columbia, Hawaii, California, New Mexico and Texas have minority populations greater than 50 percent. By 2020, eight more states are projected to join the list: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Mississippi, Nevada, New Jersey and New York. Latinos already outnumber whites in New Mexico; California will tip to a Latino plurality next year.

—By 2039, racial and ethnic minorities will make up a majority of the U.S. working-age population, helping to support a disproportionately elderly white population through Social Security and other payroll taxes. 

More than 1 in 4 people ages 18-64 will be Latino.

—The white population, now at 197.8 million, is projected to peak at 200 million in 2024, before entering a steady decline in absolute numbers. Currently 63 percent of the U.S. population, the white share is expected to drop below 50 percent by 2043, when racial and ethnic minorities will collectively become a U.S. majority. Hispanics will drive most of the minority growth, due mostly to high birth rates, jumping in share from 17 percent to 26 percent.

The pace of assimilation for today's Latinos and Asian-Americans is often compared with that of the Poles, Irish, Italians and Jews who arrived around the turn of the 20th century and eventually merged into an American white mainstream.

There was a backlash. By the 1930s, an immigrant-weary America had imposed strict quotas and closed its borders. Those newly arrived were pushed to conform and blend in with a white mainstream, benefiting from New Deal economic programs that generally excluded blacks. The immigration quotas also cut off the supply of new workers to ethnic enclaves and reduced social and economic contacts between immigrants and their countries of origin.

"America of the Melting Pot comes to End," read a 1924 opinion headline in The New York Times. The author, a U.S. senator, pledged that strict new immigration quotas would "preserve racial type as it exists here today."

Today, data show that Latinos are embracing U.S. life but also maintaining strong ties to their heritage, aided by a new stream of foreign-born immigrants who arrive each year. Hispanics, officially an ethnic group, strive to learn English and 1 in 4 intermarry, taking a white spouse.

Nowadays, immigrants face less pressure to conform than did their counterparts from a century ago. Latinos are protected as a minority, benefiting from the 1950s civil rights movement pioneered by blacks. Nearly 40 percent of Latinos now resist a white identity on census forms, checking a box indicating "some other race" to establish a Hispanic race identity.

While growing diversity is often a step toward a post-racial U.S., sociologists caution that the politics of racial diversity could just as easily become more magnified.

A first-of-its-kind AP poll conducted in 2011 found that a slight majority of whites expressed racial bias against Hispanics and that their attitudes were similar to or even greater than the bias they held toward blacks. Hispanics also remained somewhat residentially segregated from whites in lower-income neighborhoods, hurt in part by the disappearance of good-paying, midskill manufacturing jobs that helped white ethnics rise into the middle class during most of the 20th century.

The AP survey was conducted with researchers from Stanford University, the University of Michigan and NORC at the University of Chicago.

Harvard economist George Borjas projects that by 2030, the children of today's immigrants will earn on average 10 percent to 15 percent less than nonimmigrant Americans, based on past trends, and that Latinos will particularly struggle because of high rates of poverty, lack of citizenship and lower rates of education. In 1940, the children of early 20th-century white ethnics fared much better on average, earning 21.4 percent more than nonimmigrants.

About 35 percent of Hispanic babies are currently born into poverty, compared with 41 percent of blacks and 20 percent for whites.

"How America responds now to the new challenges of racial and ethnic diversity will determine whether it becomes a more open and inclusive society in the future — one that provides equal opportunities and justice for all," said Daniel Lichter, a Cornell sociologist and past president of the Population Association of America.

The demographic shift has spurred debate as to whether some civil-rights era programs, such as affirmative action in college admissions, should begin to focus on income level rather than race or ethnicity. The Supreme Court will rule on the issue by late June.

Following a racially lopsided re-election, Obama has spoken broadly about promoting social and economic opportunity. In his State of the Union speech, he said that rebuilding the middle class is "our generation's task." Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., a rising star of a mostly white Republican party now eager to attract Latino voters, is courting supporters in both English and Spanish in part by pledging programs that would boost "social mobility."

Left unclear is how much of a role government can or should play in lifting the disadvantaged, in an era of strapped federal budgets and rising debt.

The Latino immigrants include Irma Guereque, 60, of Las Vegas, who says enjoying a middle-class life is what's most important to her.

Things turned bad for the Mexico native in the recent recession after her work hours as a food server were cut at the Texas Station casino off the Strip. As a result, she couldn't make the mortgage payments on a spacious house she purchased and was forced to move into an apartment with her grandchildren.

While she's getting almost full-time hours now, money is often on her mind. Her finances mean retirement is hardly an option, even though she's got diabetes and is getting older.

Many politicians are "only thinking of the rich, and not the poor, and that's not right," Guereque said in Spanish. "We need opportunities for everyone."
___
Associated Press writers Elaine Ganley in Montfermeil, France, Jenny Barchfield in Rio de Janeiro and Michelle Rindels in Las Vegas contributed to this report.
___
Online:
Census Bureau: http://www.census.gov

EDITOR'S NOTE _ "America at the Tipping Point: The Changing Face of a Nation" is an occasional series examining the changing cultural mosaic of the U.S. and its historic shift to a majority-minority nation.

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Writers Digest Online: The Two Pillars of Novel Structure by James Scott Bell

http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/the-two-pillars-of-novel-structure?et_mid=607627&rid=3032068

Structure is translation software for your imagination.

You, the writer, have a story you want to tell. You feel it, see it, populate it with characters. But turning all that raw material into a novel isn’t simply a matter of putting it into words on a page or screen. You have to “translate” it into a form that readers can relate to.

That’s what structure does. And if you ignore it or mess with it, you risk frustrating—or worse, losing—readers.
by James Scott Bell

I was amused many years ago when a writing teacher of some repute shouted in front of an auditorium that there was no such thing as structure. He went on and on about this. Later, when I looked at his materials and the terms he had used to designate various story beats, guess how they unfolded? Yep, in a perfect, traditional three-act structure.

When it comes to the writing process, fiction writers tend to fall into two camps: those who prefer to outline before they write, and those who find outlines too constricting. The pillars of structure are equally useful tools for both of these types of writers. If you’re a writer who likes to outline, you can learn to set up a strong story by mapping out a few key structural scenes from the start. 

And if you like flying by the seat of your pants, you can continue to be as free as you like with your first draft. Write hot. Just understand that later, you will have to think about structuring what you’ve written—because manuscripts that ignore structure are almost always filed under unsold.

But what, you may ask, about authors who purposely play with structure—some to the point their books are called “experimental”? Suffice to say that these authors usually know exactly why they are doing so—and they accept as a consequence that their books might not be as popular with the reading public as novels that have structure working in their favor. 

At the very least, every author should understand structure fully before playing around with it. (This advice also applies to hand grenades.)

A Bridge to Somewhere

My favorite visual representation of story structure is the suspension bridge:

The key foundational elements here are the two pillars, or pylons. These pillars are set down in bedrock, allowing the suspension cables to support a solid and secure platform—the bridge itself.

Think about it: Every story has to begin, and every story has to end. And the middle has to hold the reader’s interest. The craft of structure tells you how to begin with a bang, knock readers out at the end, and keep them turning pages all the way through. When you ignore structure, your novel can begin to feel like one of those rope bridges swinging wildly in the wind over a 1,000-foot gorge. Not many readers are going to want to go across.

The First Pillar

The beginning of a novel tells us who the main characters are and introduces the situation at hand (the story world). It sets the tone and the stakes. But the novel does not take off or become “the story” until that first pillar is passed. Think of it as a Doorway of No Return. The feeling must be that your lead character, once she passes through, cannot go home again until the major problem of the plot is solved.

Let’s use Gone With the Wind as an example. In the first act, Scarlett O’Hara is sitting on her porch flirting with Brent and Stuart Tarleton. We get to know her as a selfish, scheming, privileged antebellum coquette. She is able to use her charms to enrapture the men around her and play them like carp on a hook. A sister of the Tarleton twins says Scarlett is “a fast piece if ever I saw one.”

If this novel were a thousand pages of Scarlett’s flirtatious ways, we’d never make it past Page 10. A successful novel is about high-stakes trouble. True character is revealed only in crisis, so Margaret Mitchell gives us some opening trouble (what I call the Opening Disturbance): Scarlett learns that Ashley is going to marry Melanie.

That trouble alone might be enough for a category romance, but not for a sprawling epic of the Old South. There must be something that forces Scarlett into a fight for her very way of life, and that’s what the first pillar is about: It thrusts Scarlett into Act 2. That event is, of course, the outbreak of the Civil War.

We first catch sight of this pillar in Gone With the Wind when Charles Hamilton hastens to Scarlett at the big barbecue at Twelve Oaks:
“Have you heard? Paul Wilson just rode over from Jonesboro with the news!”
He paused, breathless, as he came up to her. She said nothing and only stared at him.
“Mr. Lincoln has called for men, soldiers––I mean volunteers––seventy-five thousand of them!”
The South, of course, sees this as provocation. Charles tells Scarlett it will mean fighting. “But don’t you fret, Miss Scarlett, it’ll be over in a month and we’ll have them howling.”

The Civil War is a shattering occurrence that Scarlett cannot ignore or wish away. She would rather stay in the Old South and preserve Tara, her family home, and the way of life she grew up with. In mythic terms, Scarlett would like to remain in the “ordinary world.” But the outbreak of war forces Scarlett into the “dark world” of Act 2.

That’s why it’s useful to think of this as a Doorway of No Return. There is no way back to the old, comfortable world. Scarlett has to face major troubles now—and not just about matters of the heart. She will need to save her family and her land. She will need money and cleverness. She must overcome or be overcome.

In the classic three-act story structure, Act 2 is all about “death stakes.” That is, one of three aspects of death must be on the line: physical, professional or psychological.

For Scarlett, it’s psychological death (though her life is in danger at various points). If she doesn’t preserve Tara and her vision of the Old South, she will “die inside,” so to speak. 

Gone With the Wind’s story question is: Will Scarlett grow from her old self into the self she needs to be? 
She doesn’t want this fight. But she is pushed into the death stakes because of the war.

The timing of the first pillar should be before the 1/5 mark of your book. In movies, it’s common to divide the acts into a 1/4-1/2-1/4 structure. But in novels it’s best to have that first doorway appear earlier. In a fast-moving action novel like The Hunger Games, it can happen quickly. 

It’s in Chapter 1 that Katniss hears her sister’s name chosen for the games, and in the beginning of Chapter 2 volunteers to take her place.

Gone With the Wind is over 1,000 pages long. The Civil War breaks out at about the 1/10 mark.

Other examples of the first pillar:

■  In Thomas Harris’ The Silence of the Lambs, Clarice Starling is thrust into a cat-and-mouse game with Hannibal Lecter because it might be the only way to solve a serial killer case.

■  Detective Sam Spade takes on Brigid O’Shaughnessy as a client in Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon.

■  In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch accepts the job of defending a black man accused of raping a white girl. For his daughter, Scout Finch (the story’s narrator), this means events thrust her into a dark world of prejudice and injustice. She can’t remain an innocent.

Look at your own novel-in-progress:

■  Have you given us a character worth following?

■  Have you created a disturbance for that character in the opening pages?

■  Have you established the death stakes of the story?

■  Have you created a scene that will force the character into the confrontation of Act 2?

■  Is that scene strong enough—to the point that the lead character cannot resist going into the battle?

■  Does the first Doorway of No Return occur before the 1/5 mark of your story?

The Second Pillar

The second pillar is another kind of Doorway of No Return: It makes possible or inevitable the final battle and resolution.

Act 2, between the two pillars, is where the major action takes place. The stakes are death (physical, professional or psychological) and the lead has to fight (literally or figuratively). Remember, the first door has been slammed shut. The second act is a series of actions where the character confronts and resists death, and is opposed by counterforces.

Then the second pillar, or doorway, happens. This is often an event that feels like a major crisis or setback. Or it can be a clue or discovery. Regardless, it pushes the lead character into Act 3. It forces the final battle, the resolution. Indeed, it makes it possible.

Returning to the example of Gone With the Wind, Scarlett has many battles in Act 2. She needs to get out
of Atlanta with Melanie before the Yankees take over. She needs to get money to save Tara from onerous taxes. She needs to figure out how to handle that charmer Rhett Butler, who keeps showing up in her life. 


These matters relate to the overall story question, the test (and growth) of Scarlett O’Hara’s character.

All of this leads to the second pillar: the crisis that occurs when Scarlett marries Rhett. Scarlett still believes “she belonged to Ashley, forever and ever,” and yet she says yes to Rhett’s proposal. Why? Because it “was almost as if he had willed the word and she had spoken it without her own volition.”

This marriage makes inevitable the final battle in Scarlett’s heart, and the crisis intensifies. Rhett finally realizes Scarlett will never give up on Ashley, and decides to leave the marriage. Scarlett, however, has a realization of her own: that she has been living for a false dream, and that home and Rhett are what she truly needs. But it will, of course, be too late. Rhett doesn’t give a damn, and Scarlett will have to go back to Tara to think about getting him back. Tomorrow.

Other examples of the second pillar:

■  Lecter tells Clarice that Buffalo Bill covets what he sees every day (clue). This information leads her to the killer.

■  The bullet-ridden body of a ship’s captain collapses in Sam Spade’s office. Inside the bundle he was carrying is the black bird (major discovery).

■  Tom Robinson, an innocent black man, is found guilty of rape by an all-white jury, despite the evidence to the contrary (setback).

Look at your own novel-in-progress:

■  Have you created a major final crisis or setback the lead must overcome?

■  Alternatively (or additionally), have you presented a clue or discovery that is key to the story’s resolution?

■  Does this final Doorway of No Return make the resolution possible or inevitable (or both)?

The Other Side

The two pillars of structure will never let you down. In defining the three acts of your story and creating points of no return for your characters (and your readers), they will guarantee that the platform of your story is strong. And they will free you to be as creative as you like with the elements of your story—characters, voice, scenes—without fear of falling off a rope bridge into the Valley of Unread Novels.

Let the construction begin.

This article on novel writing is by James Scott Bell, who is the author of Write Great Fiction: Plot & Structure. Click here to order your copy (or click here to download the ebook).

Want to learn more? Expand your writing knowledge with these great writing books & videos:
************

For more on Brian, his blogs and his book, click here.

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Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Lightning Source and Didio Communications Ink Agreement to Expand eAudiobook Market Publishers, Booksellers Gain New Options for Secure Digital Audiobooks

 LAVERGNE, Tenn., and LEEDS, United Kingdom, Feb. 8 /PRNewswire/ --
 
 Lightning Source Inc.(SM), a pioneer in innovative digital fulfillment, and
 Didio Communications, Ltd., a world leader in digital audio services, have
 entered into a strategic alliance to jointly market their services to the
 publishing industry worldwide. 
 
 Didio and Lightning Source will collectively leverage their technological
 expertise to galvanize the eAudiobook market and work together with publishers
 to increase the volume of eAudiobook content available to consumers.  Under
 this new alliance, Lightning Source will expand its suite of services to
 include digital audiobook fulfillment capability. 
 
Didio will work with Lightning Source to gain access to and properly support worldwide channels of
 distribution for eAudiobook content. 
 
 "Our alliance with Didio provides a strategic pairing of two key digital
 fulfillment technologies," said Ed Marino, president and CEO of Lightning
 Source. "In co-marketing our services, we'll be able to offer publishers and
 booksellers one source for secure fulfillment of eBooks and eAudiobooks, as
 well as possible future combinations of the two formats." 
 
 "Lightning's alliance with Didio confirms the growing interest in
 eAudiobooks," said Paul G. Smithson, Managing Director of Didio.  "By
 combining Didio's cutting-edge eAudiobook solutions with Lightning Source's
 established track record with digital content, we're providing access to a
 unique, combined content format offering that is sure to be of great appeal to
 all online retailers and audiobook publishers, and ultimately to their
 consumers." 
 
 As a pioneer in the new world of eAudiobooks, Didio has made substantial
 investments in delivery and encryption technology, resulting in an eAudiobook
 digital delivery service that combines superior sound quality with exceptional
 security for audiobook content. 
 
Today, Didio helps audiobook publishers and retailers in this growing market develop and implement digital audio download
 strategies, and enables publishers to transfer encrypted digital downloads of
 eAudiobooks to their customers. 
 
Didio also helps publishers enlist retail affiliates who wish to access their secure eAudiobook content, and aids
 retailers in developing their service to customers who wish to sample and buy
 eAudiobooks.
 
 Didio's services for audiobook publishers include design, hosting and
 management of the eAudiobook digital distribution platform, acquisition of
 third-party distribution channels, and safe, secure delivery of eAudiobooks
 directly to customers, both online and offline.  All of these services are
 supplied by Didio as directed by their publisher and retailer clients.
 
 Content owners retain full control of their content and brand identification
 without having to assume the technical burden, time and heavy expense of
 implementation.  Didio also has future plans to offer audio-print-on-demand
 (APOD) and fulfillment services to its publisher clients.
 
 Lightning Source, a pioneer provider of print-on-demand (POD) and eBook
 fulfillment services, electronically stores books and other content in its
 digital library, which currently offers more than 20,000 titles. Lightning
 Source has long-term relationships with more than 900 publishers, and has
 received commitments to add more than 50,000 titles to its digital library.
 
 "Our alliance with Didio is a perfect complement to Lightning's services,"
 said Marino.  "Digital fulfillment leverages the extreme flexibility and
 portability of digital content, and accommodates essentially any form of
 content that can be digitized, including the continuously growing medium of
 audiobooks."
 
 "The new alliance will enable all of our customers to reap the full
 benefits of this expanding spectrum of digital services," added Didio's
 Smithson.
 
     About Lightning Source
 
 Lightning Source Inc., a subsidiary of Ingram Industries Inc., provides a
 comprehensive suite of digital fulfillment services.  The company is
 revolutionizing the options available to the industry in the secure
 conversion, storage, management, and distribution of digital content.
 Lightning stores books and other information electronically and delivers them
 "on demand" in either traditional printed format or as eBooks in response to
 orders from booksellers, librarians, and publishers.  Lightning Source has
 printed more than 1,500,000 "on demand" books for more than 900 publishers
 around the world.  For more information, visit our website at
 http://www.lightningsource.com .
 
     About Didio
 
 Didio Communications Ltd. is a provider of digital content services to the
 Publishing and Retailing industries.  Didio is a part-owned subsidiary of
 Chivers Communications Plc, itself a specialist in Publishing, having
 Audiobook and Large Print interests through its wholly-owned subsidiary
 Chivers Press Ltd. Chivers Communications Plc also has interests in Digital
 Radio Channel, One Word Ltd., and audiobook mail-order business, Audio Book
 Collection.  Together, Didio Communications Ltd and Chivers Communications Plc
 are building on relationships in the publishing industry in delivering digital
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Thursday, March 07, 2013

Amazon Wants to Get Into the Used E-Book Business — Or Bury It By Marcus Wohlsen

Amazon Wants to Get Into the Used E-Book Business — Or Bury It




Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired
There is no such thing as a dog-eared e-book — each copy is forever perfect. But a new Amazon patent could go a long way toward making the digital media in our lives a lot more like the physical version. 

Last week, Amazon patented a way to sell “used” e-books, music, videos, apps and other “digital objects.” 

The marketplace described in the patent would let such exchanges take place by cutting off the seller’s access to a piece of digital content once the buyer paid.
 
If the world’s largest online retailer opens the door to digital yard sales, the result could upend the business models of already struggling book publishers and record companies, not to mention thriving digital marketplaces like iTunes, Google Play, and Amazon itself. That is, if Amazon ever really intends to make used digital sales a reality.
 
Here’s how Amazon has sketched out the way it would work in the patent. The proposed used marketplace would work similarly to Amazon’s Kindle e-book lending process. Currently if a publisher grants Amazon the rights, when a Kindle customer “buys” a book, they have the option to loan the access rights to that digital file to friends or family that are also Kindle users. 

While the book is on loan, the original owner of the book is unable to access the e-book on any Kindle device. It’s still on those devices, but the access rights to the book have been transferred temporarily to the person with the loaned e-book.
 
The proposed used digital marketplace would take that one step further. Instead of loaning the access rights of an e-book, music file, video or application, in exchange for some cash, the original owner of the digital file would transfer the rights to use that file to another party permanently.
 
If the file were downloaded to a device, after the sale, the original owner would be unable to access the file. the data would still be on the device until deleted by the original owner, but access to the contents of that file would be turned off.
 
Amazon’s lending feature has become popular among Kindle users, and adding sales seems a natural next step, but financial and legal complications may still stand in the way, all stemming from the key differences between the virtual and the physical.
 
First, digital content is infinitely reproducible. No technological limit exists to how many times a single digital original can be copied and resold. Amazon’s patent doesn’t describe any breakthrough technology. Instead, it secures Amazon’s right to a technique for what the patent calls “maintaining scarcity.”
 
Second, every digital copy is a perfect copy.
 
“There are no dog-eared pages or scratches or nicks or cuts or highlighter marks or whatever,” says Bill Rosenblatt, a consultant and expert witness in digital content patent cases. “It’s the same exact product.”
 
In other words, a customer given the choice between a “new” e-book and a less expensive “used” e-book will buy the used copy every time. The extra expense of “new” won’t get you anything better. So why would Amazon want to get into a business that would seem to undercut the business they’re already in?
 
Rosenblatt believes that a digital resale marketplace wouldn’t ultimately make Amazon a lot more money on books or music, at least not at first. But he thinks it would move much more of Amazon’s digital content business beyond the interference of publishers, just as publishers can’t dictate the terms of, for example, the sale of used physical books on Amazon. 

Just as with physical books, publishers would only have a say — or get a cut — the first time a customer buys a copy of an e-book. The second, third and fourth sales of that “same” e-book would be purely under Amazon’s control.
 
Such an arrangement could also give Amazon’s growing business as a publisher itself a boost, Rosenblatt says.
 
“If Amazon is allowed to get away with doing resale transactions without compensating publishers, then what they can do is say, ‘hey authors, sign with us and we’ll give you a piece of the resale,’” he says. “That could attract authors who might otherwise sign with traditional publishers.”
 
At the same time, Amazon’s patent leaves room to head in a different, more cooperative direction.
 
Buried in the patent is language spelling out that the technology Amazon intends to use will have the ability to limit the number of times a digital good could be resold or loaned out. Amazon could use that constraint to strike bargains with publishers and authors to cut them in on used digital sales, which doesn’t happen with used physical media. 

Here’s your take the first time it an e-book or game sells, the second, the third, etc. 

Any arrangement where authors and publishers also make money could be useful leverage for Amazon to head off legal challenges bound to result otherwise.
 
As always, the question of copyright infringement comes into play whenever there’s a transfer of digital goods. If Amazon’s reseller marketplace ever comes to fruition, we don’t know whether Amazon will acquire the permission from rights holders to enable the loaning or reselling of digital goods at scale. 

(Amazon declined to comment for this story.) But whether permission from rights holders is even required is another issue.
 
In federal court in New York, Massachusetts-based startup ReDigi is facing off against Capitol Records, which called the young company a “clearinghouse for copyright infringement.”

ReDigi lets people buy and sell all kinds of copyrighted digital content residing on their computers. ReDigi founder and CEO John Ossenmacher argues his company’s technology actually preserves the copyright status quo by moving “used” digital content bit by bit from a seller’s computer and into the cloud before the new owner can access it.
 
As he reads it, Ossenmacher says Amazon’s patent skates closer to the copyright edge by using a technique he describes as “copy and delete,” by which a copy of the seller’s cloud-based content is made and placed into the buyer’s cloud before the first version is deleted. That copying, he says, sets Amazon apart from what his company is doing, and he thinks could get Amazon into more trouble with rights holders. 

“From the dawn of time people have been able to buy and sell goods regardless of the form they were in,” Ossenmacher says.
 
But some doubt whether Amazon really intends to uphold that commercial tradition.
 
Mike Shatzkin, a publishing veteran who now works as a consultant focused on the industry’s digital future, doubts Amazon really does want to get into digital resales.
 
“I would not leap to the conclusion that the fact that they have this patent means that they intend to go into this business,” Shatzkin says. “They may be patenting it to keep it off the market.”
 
But some intellectual property experts don’t believe the patent is written in a way designed to quash other digital marketplaces from getting under way. Amazon may simply be striking first in what promises to be the inevitable battle among the expected players — Apple, Google, eBay, Facebook — over used digital content.
 
“There is no way as I read this that this could be used to block somebody else,” says Robert Aronoff, managing partner at Pluritas, a San Francisco-based investment bank that advises companies on intellectual property transactions. “It’s just the evolution of the marketplace,” Aronoff says. “You empower and develop a market which allows users to trade. It’s electronic eBay.”
 
Additional reporting by David Kravets, Michael V. Copeland and Roberto Baldwin.


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Friday, March 01, 2013

Free Short Story: The Trans / Androgyne Practice by Neale Sourna (romance, 1 chapter / 494 words )

http://figment.com/books/545108-The-Trans-Androgyne-Practice


The Trans / Androgyne Practice
by Neale Sourna
Copyright Neale Sourna 2013
Synopsis: Locked in a coffin for an Initiation practice, Kar is terrified; but Dev is the only one to offer help. And Dev, who all Kar's friends dislike, is the one Kar truly wants. It's gonna be a long three day weekend.
JamesPattersonContest, transexual, androgyny, androgynous, love, love :), initiation, graduation, school, school assignment, coffin, terrified, friends dislike,

We lay in my stark coffin, side by side, in pitch black. Why? ’Cause who wants to lie in their coffin alone the first time?
“You okay?” Devon queried, cautiously, like I was a baby, who might explode into screeching hysterics any second. Leg touching mine, Devon’s warm grasp fumbled for my cold sweaty hand; I clutched, tightly.
“Ouch! Cut your claws, Kar. Or wear olives on your fingertips.”
“That was fun.”
“Delectable.”
“No food talk, Dev.”
“You could lose some LBs, Kar. Ow! Claws. Make me bleed out and it’s gonna get way messy in three days of this.”
“Alone. Together.”
Devon gulped, then silence. Devon’s hand in mine was—warmness, and Dev’s leg along mine—delicious; I tilted my head until my forehead touched D’s. “Glad you’re helping me. Being alone in a casket, buried underground for Initiation freaks me awful. How d’you stay so calm?”
“Been alone a lot.”
“ ’Cause everyone avoids you.” D snickered.
“And everyone loves you. Why didn’t you ask your real friends, Kar?”
“Did. ‘Kar, you can’t be serious,’ ‘stop playing.’ Or ‘you’ll always be a sub-apprentice,’ if I don’t pass. Th-They....”
“Don’t get that this terrifies you. But, then, you’ve never been truly alone; without friends, family.” Wait for it.... “Or, buried in a wood box, while healthy ... without one wrinkle.”
“Unfunny, idiot.”
“But I’m your ‘idiot’.” Wow. Dev sighed. “You’d never have asked, if your real—.”
“STOP saying ‘real friends’. You’re my real, true friend.” Long silence.
“We’ll see, Kar, after ingesting nothing but seeds and water, then pissing, possibly shitting in those baggy things; unless we seal ’em wrong, lying in a REAL stinky mess; a smell we can’t escape. Plus, no bathing and limited movement with us two squeezed in her, no sitting up or....”
“Ran out of stupid stuff to say, didn’t yah?” Devon chuckled; a pleasant, rare sound. Beautiful.
“So, gorgeous K, what’re you gonna tell them, your real…, your other friends?” I touched my ... our coffin.
“What they’ll think doesn’t seem important.”
“Now. But, then.... Nevermind. Initiation’s important, for our futures. Helping each other.”
“How am I helping you, Dev?” There was throat clearing before D’s soft answer.
“I-I like being with you.” Dev’s voice gained conviction. “Whether you consider me your friend, I’m yours, completely. And love that you asked me; so, I can give selfless.... Selfless service is required to graduate; but, I don’t really feel selfless. I adore you. I’d do just about anything for you.”
“ ‘Just about’...?”
“I’d say anything, but you’d have too much power over me. I can’t allow that.” I smiled in the pitch black, until it spilled out as giggles, then full laughter. “What’s so funny, Kar?”
“You know me better than my ‘real...’. Thank you.”
“Welcome.”
“We are gonna be so foul Tuesday. But, foul together.”
“Your smell on me, and mine on you; an all new scent.” Wow.
“What’s wrong, Kar?”
“Th-That was the sexiest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
—00—
Like this story, PLEASE, VOTE for it in the James Patterson Contest at Figment.com /
http://figment.com/books/545108-The-Trans-Androgyne-Practice