Writers and Editors

The following dispatches and quotes about the late beloved Marc Pachter are posted here on my Writers and Editors blog partly to make it easy for Marc's friends and colleagues to post comments. Marc died after a yearlong celebration of his 80th birthday, filled with travels to his favorite people, haunts, and cultural hotspots in Asia, Europe, South America, and the United States.

 

You can watch the Memorial service for Marc Pachter, April 13, 2024 (video online), held at the National Portrait Gallery.

 

• Marc Pachter, Who Revived National Portrait Gallery, Dies at 80 (Sam Roberts, NY Times, 2-23-24)
     Marc Pachter, who transformed the National Portrait Gallery in Washington from a collection primarily of solemn paintings of old white men into a more up-to-date museum that now includes illustrations and interviews with diverse living luminaries, died on Feb. 17 in Bangkok. He was 80.
     The cause was cardiac arrest, his son, Adam, said. Mr. Pachter, who [after many years of living in Washington DC] lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, died in a hospital while vacationing in Thailand.
     As director of the Portrait Gallery from 2000 to 2007, Mr. Pachter presided over a $300 million renovation that reimagined the museum while maintaining its artistic integrity.

     A memorial service was held at the National Portrait Gallery on Saturday, April 13, at 9 am in the Kugod Courtyard (at 8th and G Streets NW, DC).

     It was a beautiful day in a beautiful setting, and it was particularly nice to hear Marc's son and daughter, Adam and Gillian, talk about life with their delightfully nontraditional father.

 

• Marc's memorable talk on the Living Self Portrait Series (Marc Pachter, Director Emeritus, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution (EG3) February, 2008)

     If you listen to nothing else, listen to this lecture. Marc started to worry about the fact that people didn't get their portraits painted anymore, so he came up with the remarkable Living Self-Portrait Series. As a cultural historian, Marc conducted live interviews with  Read More 

What should it be? Black and white?  Black and White? black and white?

A few well-expressed opinions, handy for classroom and copy desk arguments.

Frequently updated and as of 11-20-24  there is no clear consensus on which of the two words (black, white) to capitalize or why.

But here you can find arguments about what's proper: 

• The Case for Capitalizing the B in Black (Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Atlantic,6-18-2020) 'The style guide of the American Psychological Association declares, as it has for a generation: “Racial and ethnic groups are designated by proper nouns and are capitalized. Therefore, use ‘Black’ and ‘White’ instead of ‘black’ and ‘white.’” That seems sensible enough. But for some people, White is the sticking point. As The American Heritage Dictionary (on whose usage panel, now disbanded, I have served) ventured, in its fourth edition: “In all likelihood, uncertainty as to the mode of styling of white has dissuaded many publications from adopting the capitalized form Black.”

• The decision to capitalize Black(John Daniszewski, The Definitive Source, AP, 7-19-20) AP’s style is now to capitalize Black in a racial, ethnic or cultural sense, conveying an essential and shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as Black, including those in the African diaspora and within Africa. The lowercase black is a color, not a Read More 

Expect to hear continuing controversy about the 2023 Hugo Awards, awarded at the Worldcon convention held in Chengdu, China. Several authors who should have qualified for the science fiction awards were disqualified without any explanation, including R.F. Kuang, author of Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence, Xiran Jay Zhao, author of Iron Widow, and Paul Weimer, who would have been eligible for Best Fan Writer as well as an episode of Netflix's The Sandman series.

 

• Worldcon in the news Charlie Stross, Charlie's Diary, 1-26-24) "The important thing to note is that the 'worldcon' is *not a permanent organization. It's more like a virus that latches onto an SF convention, infects it  Read More 

New in 2024:

(updated 11-20-24)

The BOI E-Filing System supports the electronic filing of the Beneficial Ownership Information Report (BOIR) under the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA)--"beneficial ownership information" meaning information about the individuals who directly or indirectly own or control a company. The CTA requires certain types of U.S. and foreign entities to report beneficial ownership information to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a bureau of the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

   [Emphasis here and below added for clarity about what this is all about. Let me know if someone presents crystal clear and concise information anywhere about who has to do what. In particular, do freelance writers and writing firms need to comply? Meanwhile, read this only when brain working at full capacity.]

• Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI) for Authors: Everything You Need to Know (Kevin J. Duncan, Kindlepreneur,12-18-24) Who has to file a BOI report? Every LLC, corporation, or other entity that was created by filing a document with a secretary of state or equivalent office must file a BOI report unless it qualifies for one of the CTA's exemptions.

• New Federal Reporting Requirement for Who Does Not Have to Report? Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI) (U.S. Department of the Treasury, Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, www.fincen.gov/boi FinCEN’s Small Entity Compliance Guide includes checklists for each of the 23 exemptions  Read More 

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• The Women In Publishing Summit

    Virtual, March 6-9, 2024

• BookMARCon 2024

    Virtual, April 5-7, 2024

• Pikes Peak Writers Conference

    Colorado Springs, Colorado, April 25-28, 2024

• Inkers Con 2024

    Dallas, TX June 7-9, 2024

     Attended by several hundred people, perhaps 75% new authors. If you can't attend the live conference, pay for online access (good for 6 years or so) at Inkers Con Digital Conference (July 20 to August 2, 2024). Bestselling author Pamela Kelley says "InkersCon is fantastic. A smaller conference, about the same size as NINC around 400-450 or so people and a good range of workshops. It's held in Dallas I think. I do the virtual every year and it's about $200 and well worth it--as we have access for six years. Some really great sessions."

• The Self Publishing Show LIVE!

    Live, London’s South Bank, June 25-26, 2024

• Killer Nashville

    International Writers Conference, Nashville, Tennessee, August 22-25, 2024

    For writers in all genres incorporating mystery, thriller, action, or suspense elements

• NINC 

    Novelists, Inc., TradeWinds Island Grand Beach Resort, St. Pete Beach, Florida, September 18-22, 2024

      Writes bestselling novelist Pamela Kelley: "NINC is for more experienced authors, both trad and indie, and meets yearly in St. Pete, Florida. I don't go for the workshops, I go for the networking with vendors and to see my author friends. NINC is the one I never miss and the only one I attended in-person last year."
• Moonlight & Magnolias

    Romance Writers conference, Atlanta, Georgia, October 3-5, 2024

• Self-Pub Con

    The Self-Publishing Advice Conference, a free online author conference run in association with the Alliance of Independent Authors (three days, October 21-24, 2024)

• Author Nation

    Las Vegas, NV, November 11-15, 2024

     Taking over from the 20Books conference, last held in 2023.  On YouTube: 20Booksto50k[R]-Live Events, check out 20Books sessions from past years, free). Author Nation has the same location and general timing as 20Books, but is different. Listen to past events here.

       Writes popular novelist Pamela Kelley in 2024: "I went to Author Nation a few years ago when it was 20books. It only changed hands this year because the organizer retired from doing it--it's a huge project--close to 2000 attendees in Vegas. It's a great conference, very inexpensive and there are sessions for all levels. It's probably about 75% newer authors so new people shouldn't feel intimidated--they will be in good company as it's a friendly, inclusive conference. And all the sessions from past years are up for free on Youtube. I don't know if that will continue now that it's Author Nation, there may be a fee attached to the videos going forward, possibly."

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ROUNDUP ARTICLES
• Eight Indie Author Conferences to Attend In 2024

     (Clayton Noblit, Written Word Media, 1-24-24)
• 5 Amazing Conferences For Indie Authors To Attend in 2024 (Mackenzie Harrison, BookBrush)
• A Guide to the Best Author Conferences (Self-Publishing.com, 5-3-23) Not necessarily indie author events.

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THE FICTION LIST*

• Life Among the Savages by Shirley Jackson

     "In a hilariously charming domestic memoir, America’s celebrated master of terror turns to a different kind of fright: raising children."
• The Dept of Speculation by Jenny Offill.

      "If I tell you that it’s funny, and moving, and true; that it’s as compact and mysterious as a neutron; that it tells a profound story of love and parenthood while invoking (among others) Keats, Kafka, Einstein, Russian cosmonauts, and advice for the housewife of 1897, will you please simply believe me, and read it?” ~Michael Cunningham
• The Millstone by Margaret Drabble.

     The story of an upper-middle-class unwed mother in 1960s London, from a novelist who is “often as meticulous as Jane Austen and as deadly as Evelyn Waugh”
• The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing

      "Doris Lessing's real achievement in this book, I think, was simply in her matter-of-fact her handling of controversial matters (controversial in the period between World War II and the sixties, at any rate). She writes about the life of a divorced woman with a child, her relationships with that child, with her best (woman) friend, with her lovers, her comrades in the English CP, her body, the political world, etc., in ways that are remarkable for their straightforward candor."
• The Women's Room by Marilyn French

      “An important fictional account of a whole generation of women . . . Arresting, very real and poignant.” ~ The Cleveland Plain Dealer
• The Nursery by Szilvia Molnar

      "Molnar's debut, about the first few sleep-decimated weeks in the life of a new mother...brings this particularly mind-eviscerating state of affairs into startlingly sharp relief in this uncompromising novel. And yet this is also an oddly affirmative novel, alive with a dangerous self-aware humor." ~ Daily Mail

      NY Public Library: Struggling with postpartum depression, a new mother, ill at ease with this state of perpetual giving, carrying, and feeding, strikes up a tentative friendship with her ailing upstairs neighbor, but they are both running out of time, and something is soon to crack."
• Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy (to be published in 2024)

     "Anyone who has endured “the blurred days and the blurred nights” of early motherhood – or indeed anyone contemplating the possibility of embarking on them – be warned. You’re looking at a book-length panic attack....There were times when quite frankly I couldn't read on because it was the descriptions were so raw and jarringly close to home. A brilliant book but not an easy read."~Sarah Crown, The Guardian
• Reproduction by Louisa Hall (to be published June 2024)

     A lucid, genre-defying novel that explores the surreality of pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood in a country in crisis
• The Green Road by Ann Enright

     Spanning thirty years, The Green Road tells the story of Rosaleen, matriarch of the Madigans, a family on the cusp of either coming together or falling irreparably apart.
• The Wren by Ann Enright

     "This is a powerful, thoughtful book by one of the great living writers on the subject of family. Speaking about love in terms both domestic and transcendent, Enright coos through newly connected wires." ~ New York Times

      "The power of Enright's novel derives not so much from the age-old tale of men behaving badly, but from the beauty and depth of her own style. She's so deft at rendering arresting insights into personality types or situations."~ Maureen Corrigan, NPR
• Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

      "Taffy Brodesser-Akner updates the miserable-matrimony novel, dropping it squarely in our times. . . . Brodesser-Akner has written a potent, upsetting and satisfying novel, illustrating how the marital pledge—build our life together—overlooks a key fact: There are two lives.”—The New York Times Book Review
• Beloved by Toni Morrison.

       “A triumph.” ~Margaret Atwood, The New York Times Book Review
• Night Waking by Sarah Moss

       This one might be tough to read.
• Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder

      In this blazingly smart and voracious debut novel, an artist turned stay-at-home mom becomes convinced she's turning into a dog. • "A must-read for anyone who can’t get enough of the ever-blurring line between the psychological and supernatural that Yellowjackets exemplifies." —Vulture
• Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellman

      "Dense to look at, challengingly epic, the novel is built around one Ohio housewife’s monologue, flowing with dazzling lightness and speed. The detritus and maddening complexity of domesticity unfold in one breath, over a thousand pages. Shards of film plot and song collide with climate change anxiety; the terrors of parenting, healthcare and shopping lists wrestle with fake news and gun culture."~Booker Prize judge, Joanna MacGregor
• After Birth by Elisa Albert.

       Acclaimed for its insight, outrageous humor, and power to spark fierce debate, After Birth is a daring and transformative novel about friendship, history, and the body.
• Crazy by Jane Feaver.

       Funny, philosophical, sobering and wise, Crazy is crammed with insight and laced with great sentences~Claire Kilroy, Guardian
• Hey Yeah Right Get a Life (short stories by Helen Simpson)

      This collection, Simpson's third and best yet, is a loosely linked set of stories about women - at work, at home and on holiday - that is poignant, perceptive, often sad and frequently funny.

• To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

       "A classic for a reason. My mind was warped into a new shape by her prose and it will never be the same again." —Greta Gerwig
• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

     If the first time you read it you loved the stories about the girls, read it again focusing on Mrs. March's role in the story.

 

THE NONFICTION LIST*
• Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution by Adrienne Rich,

      'In order for all women to have real choices all along the line, ' Ardrienne Rich writes, 'we need fully to understand the power and powerlessness embodied in motherhood in patriarchal culture.'
• The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan (the 50th anniversary edition)

      "Brilliant…[Friedan] succeeded where no other feminist writer had. She touched the lives of ordinary readers." ~ Louis Menand, The New Yorker
• Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood a book of essays by Ann Enright.

     "Making Babies is a collection of short essays, some of them stream of consciousness, that move chronologically through the landmarks of motherhood. She writes with brutal candor and irreverence about the things that the feel-good baby books don’t tell you."~ Moira Hodgson, Wall Street Journal
• A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother by Rachel Cusk.

     "A funny, moving, brutally honest account of her early experiences of motherhood. When it was published it 2001, it divided critics and readers. One famous columnist wrote a piece demanding that Cusk’s children be taken into care, saying she was unfit to look after them, and Oprah Winfrey invited her on the show to defend herself."
• Toddlers: The Mumsnet Guide: A Million Mums' Trade Secrets by Mumsnet and the Mumsnet Mums Morningpaper.

      Sensible, funny, "a breath of fresh air" (print on demand)

 

* SOURCES:

When I read the following two pieces, I realized that although I had read some of these novels and nonfiction accounts of motherhood, I had missed a lot of them. So this re-assembled list is a reading list for me (to refer to at the library) as well as for you, or parents you might want to give a book to. I have added quotes from other sources. Let me know of any book about motherhood that you would add to the list.
---Top 10 novels about motherhood (Claire Kilroy, The Guardian, 5-10-23) From Elena Ferrante to Taffy Brodesser-Akner, writers have captured the pressures that being a mother can inflict on marriage and on the creative self.
---Eleanor Birne's top 10 books on motherhood (Eleanor Birne, The Guardian, 3-30-11) From Anna Karenina to Anne Enright, here are 10 striking portraits of motherhood from fiction and non-fiction books.

The Guardian publishes a roundup piece on this topic every now and again; do a search and you can find a bunch of them online.

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assembled by Pat McNees

 

“I advise everybody to be a little careful when they go down there. Stay woke. Keep your eyes open.” ~ Lead Belly, "Scottsboro Boys," 1938

 

"DeSantis engineered and recently signed into law the “Stop W.O.K.E.” Act, a title that precisely captures what the bill’s architects aimed to do: stop people in Florida from speaking out in ways that challenge racism and other kinds of discrimination." ~ Ishena Robinson, NAACP

 

"I been sleeping all my life. And now that Mr. Garvey done woke me up, I'm gon' stay woke. And I'm gon' help him wake up other black folk." ~ Barry Beckham in his 1972 play Garvey Lives!

 

• The Origin of Woke : William Melvin Kelley Is the ‘Woke’ Godfather We Never Acknowledged (Elijah C. Watson, Okay Player) In the first of his three-part Origin of Woke series, Elijah Watson highlights William Melvin Kelley, the Harlem author credited with coining the word.
---The Origin of Woke: How the Death of Woke Led to the Birth of Cancel Culture (Elijah Watson)

"Most people who are woke ain't calling themselves woke. Most people who are woke are agonizing inside. They're too busy being depressed to call themselves woke."

      "This is what Georgia Anne Muldrow — the woman who introduced woke to Erykah Badu who then introduced it to the world — told me almost two years ago. Throughout the 2010s, Muldrow's declaration became more declarative as woke became ubiquitous in the world. From "I'd stay woke" to "I stay woke"; "I stay woke" to "Stay woke"; and "Stay woke" to "Woke." As the phrase changed so did what it represented. With "stay woke," there was the implication that it was a continuous action — that one isn't only constantly challenging the injustices and transgressions of the world, but themselves, too. "Woke," on its own, is nothing more than a descriptor — a way to signal one's social awareness....Now used as a pejorative, woke has given way to online phenomenons like "call-out culture" and "cancel culture," both of which have also been met with derision. Despite its root function — to protect and give a voice to marginalized people and communities — woke is now seen as a detriment to societal progress.'

---The Origin of Woke: How Erykah Badu and Georgia Anne Muldrow Sparked The “Stay Woke” Era. Muldrow: "To be woke is to be black.  Woke is definitely a black experience — woke is if someone put a burlap sack on your head, knocked you out, and put you in a new location and then you come to and understand where you are ain't home and the people around you ain't your neighbors. They're not acting in a neighborly fashion, they're the ones who conked you on your head. You got kidnapped here and then you got punked out of your own language, everything. That's woke — understanding what your ancestors went through. Just being in touch with the struggle that our people have gone through here and understanding we've been fighting since the very day we touched down here. There was no year where the fight wasn't going down."

• If You're Woke You Dig It; No mickey mouse can be expected to follow today's Negro idiom without a hip assist. (William Melvin Kelley, NY Times, 5-20-62, viewable in the Times Machine, but "woke" appears only in the title.)

 

• *** A history of “wokeness” (Aja Romano, Vox, 10-9-20) Stay woke: How a Black activist watchword got co-opted in the culture war. In the six years since the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, “woke” has evolved into a single-word summation of leftist political ideology, centered on social justice politics and critical race theory. This framing of “woke” is bipartisan: It’s used as a shorthand for political progressiveness by the left, and as a denigration of leftist culture by the right. On the left, to be “woke” means to identify as a staunch social justice advocate who’s abreast of contemporary political concerns — or to be perceived that way. On the right, “woke” — like its cousin “canceled” — bespeaks “political correctness” gone awry, and the term itself is usually used sarcastically.

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• Woke Is Now A Racial Slur Thanks to White People (Allison Wiltz, Writers and Editors of Color Magazine, 11-10-21) "Keep in mind White people can never be "woke." Thinking they can is part of the problem. Becoming "woke" is a unique experience for Black people because we live in a nation that constantly gaslights us about the racism we see in our communities and experience first hand. Waking up means rejecting the false narratives and overcoming the psychological shackles of White supremacy."
• Wikipedia on "Woke" 'Woke is an adjective derived from African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) meaning "alert to racial prejudice and discrimination". Beginning in the 2010s, it came to encompass a broader awareness of social inequalities such as racial injustice, sexism, and denial of LGBT rights.'
• Earning the ‘Woke’ Badge (Amanda Hess, Amanda Hess, NY Times Magazine, 4-24-16) "These days, it has become almost fashionable for people to telegraph just how aware they have become. And this uneasy performance has increasingly been advertised with one word: “woke.” Think of “woke” as the inverse of “politically correct.” If “P.C.” is a taunt from the right, a way of calling out hypersensitivity in political discourse, then “woke” is a back-pat from the left, a way of affirming the sensitive. It means wanting to be considered correct, and wanting everyone to know just how correct you are.

• The “Woke History” Wars Emma Green with Tyler Foggatt (New Yorker podcast, 3-8-23) discusses a major debate in academia about whether contemporary politics are shaping our understanding of the past too much.
• The Roots Of Wokeness (Andrew Sullivan, The Weekly Dish, 7-31-20) It's time we looked more closely at the philosophy behind the movement. 'There’s no conspiracy: we all act unknowingly in perpetuating systems of thought that oppress other groups. To be “woke” is to be “awake” to these invisible, self-reinforcing discourses, and to seek to dismantle them—in ourselves and others.'

 

 Read More 

Published initially 11/14/2014; updated 1-5-24

• Everything and Less’ Review: Fiction in Prime Time (Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal, 11-5-21) Amazon has transformed the way we read books—and, according to Mark McGurl, Stanford professor and literary critic and author of Everything and Less: The Novel in the Age of Amazon, how they’re written. “Most literary studies focus their insights on the writers they consider the best, or the most significant artistically. But Amazon, being primarily a retail platform, doesn’t care about the content of books, only about how they sell and to whom. So under its hegemony the books suddenly elevated in stature belong to the traditionally “down-market sub-basement” commercial genres. In other words, like a private eye or tabloid journalist, Mr. McGurl spends his time digging through trash.”
      “In the Age of Amazon, all fiction is genre fiction. Dividing contemporary literature into a vast array of searchable genre categories, each with its own best-seller list, Amazon is the host of a genre system conceived as an engine of infinitely infoliating permutations of objects of narrative desire.” The most popular of those categories are post-apocalyptic fantasy sagas and romance novels, and Mr.McGurl devotes interpretive space to exemplars from each: Hugh Howey’s “Wool” series and E.L. James’s “Fifty Shades of Grey” trilogy. These books are also notable for having been originally self-published, and it is through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing platform that the company has shown its true service-oriented ethos. Here writers can target increasingly niche customer wishes, and Mr.McGurl has a funny chapter on the explosion of fetish lit, like Adult Baby Diaper Lover erotica, “the quintessential Amazonian genre of literature.”          See also McGurl's The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing

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• Authors and Booksellers Urge Justice Dept. to Investigate Amazon (Alexandra Alter, NY Times, 8-16-23) The online retailer’s size and sway affects the free exchange of ideas, the groups argue. The Biden administration has stepped up enforcement of antitrust policies. On Wednesday, the Open Markets Institute, an antitrust think tank, along with the Authors Guild and the American Booksellers Association, sent a letter to the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission, calling on the government to curb Amazon’s “monopoly in its role as a seller of books to the public.”
       "The groups are pressing the Justice Department to investigate not only Amazon’s size as a bookseller, but also its sway over the book market — especially its ability to promote certain titles on its site and bury others, said Barry Lynn, the executive director of the Open Markets Institute, a research and advocacy group focused on strengthening antimonopoly policies.
       "What we have is a situation in which the power of a single dominant corporation is warping, in the aggregate, the type of books that we’re reading,” Lynn said in an interview. “This kind of power concentrated in a democracy is not acceptable.”

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• Is Amazon Changing the Novel? (Parul Seghal, New Yorker, 11-1-21) In the new literary landscape, readers are customers, writers are service providers, and books are expected to offer instant gratification. "Amazon—which, as its founder, Jeff Bezos, likes to point out, is named for the river that is not only the world’s largest but larger than the next five largest rivers combined—controlled almost three-quarters of new-adult-book sales online and almost half of all new-book sales in 2019, according to the Wall Street Journal. Unlike Mudie’s, it’s also a publisher, with sixteen book imprints...
      "The social-media site Goodreads, purchased by Amazon in 2013, hosts more than a hundred million registered users and, McGurl ventures, may be “the richest repository of the leavings of literary life ever assembled, exceeded only by the mass of granular data sent back to home base from virtually every Kindle device in the world.”

      But what McGurl considers the “most dramatic intervention into literary history” is yet another Amazon division, Kindle Direct Publishing (K.D.P.); it allows writers to bypass traditional gatekeepers and self-publish their work for free, with Amazon taking a significant chunk of any proceeds....

      "The K.D.P. platform pays the author by the number of pages read, which creates a strong incentive for cliffhangers early on, and for generating as many pages as possible as quickly as possible. The writer is exhorted to produce not just one book or a series but something closer to a feed—what McGurl calls a “series of series.” 

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• Amazon to shut its bookstores and other shops as its grocery chain expands (Jeffrey Dastin, Reuters, 3-2-22) Amazon.com Inc plans to "close all 68 of its brick-and-mortar bookstores, pop-ups and shops carrying toys and home goods in the United States and United Kingdom, ending some of its longest-running retail experiments. The news marks a turning point for a company that began as an online bookseller and helped drive established rivals such as Borders to bankruptcy.
     "But the company's innovations were not enough to counter the march toward online shopping that Amazon itself had set off. Its "physical stores" revenue - a mere 3% of Amazon's $137 billion in sales last quarter, largely reflective of consumer spending at its Whole Foods subsidiary - has often failed to keep pace with growth in the retailer's other businesses.
      "Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, said internet-savvy Amazon was right to forgo the niche market of brick-and-mortar book shoppers, as bad a match as electric car maker Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) opening gas stations."

 

• Amazon’s Toll Road: How the Tech Giant Funds Its Monopoly Empire by Exploiting Small Businesses (Stacy Mitchell, Institute for Local Self-Reliance, December 2021) "One of the most striking measures of Amazon’s monopoly power is the extraordinary amount of money that it’s able to extract from the independent businesses that rely on its site to reach customers. In this report, we find that, over the last two years, Amazon’s revenue from the fees it levies on third-party sellers has more than doubled. In 2019, Amazon pocketed $60 billion in seller fees.This year, its take will soar to $121 billion, our new research finds....
     "Amazon’s dominance of online retail means that small businesses have little choice but to rely on its site to reach consumers. This report finds that Amazon is exploiting its position as a gatekeeper to impose steep and growing fees on third-party sellers. Even as these exorbitant fees bankrupt sellers, they are generating huge profits for Amazon, a fact that the tech giant conceals in its financial reports. These profits are not only the spoils of Amazon’s monopoly power. They are the essential fuel that feeds its market-domination strategies, enabling it to absorb massive, predatory losses designed to lock-in market control and fund breakneck expansion."

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• What Happened to Amazon’s Bookstore? (David Streitfeld, NY Times, 12-3-21) A lawsuit filed in federal court in Maryland "offers a glimpse into Amazon’s dominance and perhaps its vulnerability. Amazon’s online store has surpassed Walmart, making it the largest retailer outside China. By delivering essentials and luxuries to those stuck at home during the pandemic, it helped many people navigate a bleak moment....It is one of the few companies valued at more than a trillion dollars. For all that success, however, Amazon is under pressure from many directions....
     "There are sellers like Mr. Boland, who say they are suffering from the Wild West atmosphere on the site; regulators, who are taking a closer look at Amazon’s power; unhappy warehouse employees, who would like a better deal; and lawmakers, who want Amazon to disclose more about its third-party sellers. There are also the devious sellers themselves, whom Amazon says it is having a hard time eradicating....
      "The bookstore is the oldest part of Amazon, still central to its identity but no longer to its bottom line. It feels like where every Amazon shopping experience could be heading — immense, full of ads and unvetted reviews, ruled by algorithms and third-party sellers whose identities can be elusive.... “Should we care as a society that a single firm controls half of our most precious cultural commodity and its automation isn’t working right?” asked Christopher Sagers, the author of “Antitrust: Examples & Explanations.”... Offering tens of millions of items to hundreds of millions of customers prevents any human touch — but opens up a lot of space for advertising, and for confusion and duplicity....Mr. Boland said: “Amazon has done a great job of expanding the marketplace for books. It’s too bad they’ve decided not to police their own platform, because it’s leading to all sorts of trouble.”Amazon acknowledges that some third-party sellers bring problems, including fraud, counterfeiting and abuse." ...Amazon gives writers and publishers broad latitude to sell anything, including the mediocre and the misleading. The store’s logic has always been that the good work will rise and the bad will fall. In the meantime, however, some readers get suckered."

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• People Now Spend More at Amazon Than at Walmart (Karen Weise and Michael Corkery, Technology, NY Times, 8-17-21) Proof that the online future has arrived: The biggest e-commerce company outside China has unseated the biggest brick-and-mortar seller. Propelled in part by surging demand during the pandemic, people spent more than $610 billion on Amazon over the 12 months ending in June... Indeed, the company’s delivery (many items land on doorsteps in a day or two) and wide selection first drew customers to online shopping, and it has kept them buying more there ever since.... “Walmart has been around for so long, and now Amazon comes around with a different model and replaces them as a No. 1.”

 

• Amazon’s Importance to US Book Sales Keeps Increasing—for Better or Worse (Jane Friedman draws from material first published in The Hot Sheet, 9-23-2020) Since Hot Sheet started publishing in 2015, Amazon has changed, grown, and dominated more than any other company in the US book publishing industry. Among points discussed (quoting roughly from headings): Of all the writer-focused programs Amazon has launched in the last decade; only one is still active: Kindle Singles, an ebook subscription service which requires exclusivity, has become essential for some genre fiction authors. Amazon could be making it difficult for other publishers to break out new novelists. Amazon has doubled down on its own traditional publishing program, Amazon Publishing (APub). Amazon creates its own bestseller lists and also dominates its own Kindle bestseller list. Definitely worth reading (and The Hot Sheet is worth subscribing, if you're deeply interesting in publishing).

 

• Amazon Publishes Books by Top Authors, and Rivals Fret (Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, Wall Street Journal, 1-14-2020) "Dean Koontz, Patricia Cornwell are among the blue-chip writers whose books the tech giant is not just selling but publishing. It was a surprising move because it means his new books likely won't appear in retail stores, which generally boycott Amazon-published titles. But Mr. Koontz is banking on Amazon’s vast retail machine to get his work to readers, whether in physical or digital formats."

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• A lot has changed in book publishing in the last ten years (Mike Shatzkin, Shatzkin Files, 7-23-19) "At the beginning of this decade, Amazon Publishing had ideas about signing up big authors. But they were stymied then by the pretty stubborn refusal of the rest of the supply chain to stock books published by their biggest retail competitor.
"But that was when Amazon sales were about 20-25 percent of the market. Now they’re probably over half, and well above that for many books. Whether they will successfully sell Koontz beyond Amazon remains to be seen, but their no-middleperson structure enables them to pay far more of each retail dollar in royalties, so half the sales or more can generate more income to the author than a publisher without its own retailing capability can deliver selling a larger number of units. If this is a sign of things to come, and it is hard to see why it wouldn’t be, some profound changes might be just around the corner."

 

• The Week’s Big Story: Amazon Publishing on Wooing Dean Koontz (Porter Anderson, Publishing Perspectives, 7-26-19)
•Amazon To Open Hundreds Of Brick-And-Mortar Bookstores (Pavithra Mohan, Fast Company, 2-2-16) Amazon, the online retailer that killed off so many independent bookshops, is getting ready to launch its own brick-and-mortar book chain. According to the Wall Street Journal, the CEO of a major mall operator, General Growth Properties, revealed on Tuesday that Amazon intends to launch hundreds of bookstores.
Why Amazon's Rumored "Bookstores" Probably Won't Be What You Think (Rich Bellis, Fast Company, 2-3-16) If Amazon does expand its physical retail footprint, don’t expect it to focus exclusively or even primarily on books. It may see physical locations as (among other things) more akin to Apple Stores, where it can showcase the hardware it sells online.

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• Meet the Guy Behind Amazon’s Secret Retail Store Plans (Jason Del Rey, re/code, 2-3-16) The man behind the Kindle is leading Amazon’s project to create the retail stores of the future. And bookstores are just the beginning. These are two of the new details Re/code has uncovered about Amazon’s plans for expansion into physical retail.
• Amazon Plans Hundreds of Brick-and-Mortar Bookstores, Mall CEO Says (Greg Bensinger, WSJ, 2-2-16) mazon Plans Hundreds of Brick-and-Mortar Bookstores, Mall CEO Says

In the following pieces about a dispute among them, Amazon and book publishers take turns being the bad guy. Authors, read these often excellent arguments for and against book publishers, Amazon, and others engaged in this battle for market power and tell us what you think!

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Updated 8-6-24   H/T Martha Masinton

• Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press:  (8-14-23) In August 2023 law enforcement officers in a rural Kansas county raided the offices and homes of the editors of a local newspaper, seizing electronic newsgathering equipment and reporting materials and resulting in a nationwide uproar over the threats to our First Amendment principles of a free press.

    The Aug. 11 searches of the Marion County Record's office and the homes of its publisher and a City Council member have been sharply criticized, putting Marion at the center of a debate over the press protections offered by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

---A conversation with the newspaper owner raided by cops (Marisa Kabas, The Handbasket, 8-12-23) [This is the piece that took the story viral.]

    Eric Meyer says his paper had been investigating the police chief, Gideon Cody, prior to the raids on his office and home. They did so because of a complaint by a local restaurant owner named Kari Newell.

 

---Two big takeaways from the Marion County Record raid investigation (Gabe Rottman, Protecting Sources and Material, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, 8-11-24)The report affirms the importance of a “subpoena-first” approach when journalists are themselves suspected of a crime. See also the investigators' final report (8-11-24) The two special prosecutors (Marc Bennett and Barry Wilkerson) also sent a press release condemning the raid 8-13-23)

---How a small-town feud in Kansas sent a shock through American journalism (Jonathan O'Connell, Paul Farhi and Sofia Andrade, Washington Post, 8-26-23. Illustrated.)

    A police raid without precedent on a weekly newspaper alarmed First Amendment advocates. The real story of how it happened, though, is rooted in the roiling tensions and complex history of a few key community members.

     "The emotional response to the raid was heightened by the sudden death of the editor's 98-year-old mother, who had railed furiously at the officers sorting through her belongings at their home and collapsed a day later. The Record blamed her death on her agitation over the raid.

     "Get out of my house!" Joan Meyer had shouted at Cody from behind her walker before calling him an expletive, home surveillance video revealed.       

     "Don't you touch any of that stuff!"
     Yet parsing the events that led to the search — and understanding its larger implications for a free press in the United States — comes down to untangling the complex interrelationships and tortured history of a small group of people coexisting in a single small town.
     At the center of everything were a business owner, a police chief and a newspaper.

---The Marion raid and the Privacy Protection Act (Gabe Rottman, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, 8-21-23)

    How does the “subpoena-first” rule in the Privacy Protection Act actually work?
   "During the raid, the police carted off computers, cell phones, and documents. The computers, and possibly the phones, will contain not only raw reporting material — information and documents gathered, maybe photographs, etc. — but also things like unpublished stories and other actual “news” that reflects the editorial work of the reporters at the Record (all that stuff on all the computers seized). There is no "subpoena-first" rule for the latter, but it receives higher protections than the raw “documentary material” that is obtainable with a subpoena.

   RCFP addresses the question How does the "subpoena-first" rule in the Privacy Protection Act — the federal law limiting law enforcement's ability to conduct newsroom searches — actually work?  In so doing the authors unpack and clarify several terms — "work product" and "documentary materials" and "unlawful acts" — as well as several exceptions: the "suspect" exception and threats to life or limb, and “reason to believe” and the “subpoena-first” exception. And they conclude:

     "In short, it is true that the "subpoena-first" exception reflects the law's intention that police always use the least intrusive means possible when inquiring into the business of the newsroom, and, in practice, gives affected journalists and news organizations the ability to negotiate or challenge a legal demand. But it's important to remember that there is no such rule for a reporter's actual work, in recognition of the heightened sensitivity there. And that's potentially relevant in the Marion case in that the police department may have seized work product related to the newspaper's investigation into the police chief himself."

---After a police raid on a Kansas newspaper, questions mount (Sofia Andrade and Paul Farhi, Washington Post, 8-13-23) Law enforcement seized computers and other records from the Marion County Record on Friday, raising concerns about press freedom. Restaurant owner Kari Newell "claimed that the newspaper, the Marion County Record, had illegally obtained damaging information about a 2008 conviction for drunken driving and was preparing to publish it, leading a local judge to issue a warrant authorizing police to seize the newspaper’s files.
     'The Record, a family-owned weekly serving the small town of about 1,900, didn’t publish the information about Newell’s conviction for drunken driving and has denied that it came by it illegally.
      'Police raids on news organizations are almost unknown in the United States and are illegal under most circumstances under state and federal law.       

      “This shouldn’t happen in America,” said Emily Bradbury, the executive director of the Kansas Press Association, in an interview Sunday. She added: “Freedom of the press is fundamental to our democracy. … We’re not going to let this stand on our watch.”
     'Bradbury said the newspaper’s records could have been obtained via a subpoena, a court-ordered command for specific material that is subject to legal objections, not “an unannounced search.”

---Media coalition condemns police raid on Marion County Record (Reporters Committee, 8-14-23) The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and more than 35 news media organizations are condemning last week’s police raid of Kansas’s Marion County Record during which law enforcement officers seized the newspaper’s electronic newsgathering equipment and reporting materials. "Newsroom searches and seizures are among the most intrusive actions law enforcement can take with respect to the free press, and the most potentially suppressive of free speech by the press and the public.

---A Police Raid on a Kansas Newspaper Could Force the DOJ’s Hand (Matt Ford, Politics, NPR, 8-15-23) The publisher of the Marion County Record says local law enforcement unleashed “Gestapo tactics” on his organization over the weekend.

---Warrant for Kansas newspaper raid withdrawn by prosecutor for ‘insufficient evidence’ (Luke Nozicka, Jonathan Shorman, and Katie Moore, Kansas City Star, 8-30-23)

On Wednesday, August 16, the county prosecutor withdrew the search warrant and directed law enforcement to return the seized material.

---Kansas commission seeks magistrate’s perspective on Marion search warrant complaint (Tim Carpenter,Kansas Reflector, 9-6-23)

     Judge Laura Viar asked to respond to ethics claim leveled by Topekan. First Amendment attorneys said they were convinced the judge ought to have been able to grasp the warrants were constitutionally flawed. The search warrant was secured based on an assertion a Record reporter somehow violated state law by looking up information on a public website of the Kansas Department of Revenue about a restaurant owner's driving license status.

--- 'I'm more worried about the old lady,' Former Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody says on raid body camera footage (KSHB News 41, 11-6-23)

      On Aug. 11, police raided the newsroom and two homes looking for information regarding local restaurant owner Kari Newell's driving record.
      "The footage shows Gideon Cody, who stepped down as Marion police chief Monday, mostly sitting in a chair while his officers and the Marion County Sheriff's Department searches the offices of the newspaper.
      "Law enforcement appears frustrated with how long it's taking to download data from the Record's computers."

• Marion police chief suspended after raid of Marion County Record newspaper in Kansas (Raja Razek and Nouran Salahieh, CNN, 10-1-23) 

        "Such acts were done by Chief Cody in retaliation for Ms. Gruver exercising her protected rights under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution as a reporter for the Record, which protects freedom of speech and freedom of the press," the lawsuit states.

         "In addition to having her computer seized, Gruver says Cody physically seized her personal cell phone from her, which the suit argues did not fall under the scope of the warrant.  By seizing the personal cell phone, the suit states, Cody violated Gruver's Fourth Amendment right to protection from unreasonable search or seizure.  

       "The now-suspended police chief is also at the center of a federal lawsuit filed by Marion County Record reporter Debbie Gruver, who accuses Cody of violating her constitutional rights by obtaining an “unreasonable and unlawful” search warrant and seizing her personal property, according to the complaint.
      "The suit alleges Cody targeted Gruver because he knew she had been investigating allegations of misconduct against the chief during his time working for the Kansas City Police Department, although the newspaper has not published those allegations.

      "It's not just the police chief who has faced backlash over the raids. Judge Laura Viar, who signed off on a search warrant authorizing the searches, is facing a complaint about her decision and has been asked by a judicial body to respond, records shared with CNN by the complainant show.

 
• Kansas officials downplayed involvement in Marion raid. Here’s what they knew. (Sherman Smith, Kansas Reflector, 11-6-23)

     Documents show unquestioning support before raid, followed by attempts to sidestep outrage. The plot thickens.

•  Marion Police Chief Resignation Not Enough, Raided Newspaper Owner and Lawyer Say (Liam Scott, Voice of America, 10-5-23)
     “We should not be celebrating this whatsoever. We should be glad that his gun and badge have been taken away from him. But the city did nothing to convince me that they’re taking appropriate action,” Rhodes said. “The city took no action.
      “I don’t understand why it took two months for someone to take Chief Cody’s gun and badge. He is clearly unfit for duty. And this should have happened a long time ago,” he said.
    "The raid on the weekly newspaper has come to symbolize the yearslong plight of local news in the United States. Despite the many all-nighters spent working on the paper since the raid, Meyer said he has somehow managed to maintain an optimistic outlook.
      “You can look at Marion, Kansas, as the place where there’s a bunch of corruption going on,” he said. “Or you can look at Marion, Kansas, as the place where there was a bunch of corruption going on, and we caught it, whereas they might not have caught it in other places.”

 

2024
• Colorado authorities wrapping up investigation into Marion police who raided Kansas newspaper (Sherman Smith, Kansas Reflector, 4-2-24) The Colorado Bureau of Investigation is nearly finished with its inquiry into potential criminal activity surrounding the raid on the Marion County Record last year and will turn over findings to special prosecutors later this month, state authorities said Tuesday.

• Kansas newspaper that was raided by Marion police sues officials for attack on free press (Sherman Smith, Kansas Reflector, 4-1-24) Marion County Record lawsuit says mayor, police chief and sheriff sought revenge for critical news coverage

• The Marion County Record raid: one year later (listen to this Kansas Reflector Podcast, 8-5-24) "A chilling case of overreach in law enforcement. They can't stop the press from writing stories. "Sherman Smith, Kansas Reflector editor in chief, and Marisa Kabas, founder of The Handbasket, talk about changes in Marion one year after police raided the newspaper office, and how the raid impacts journalism.

• Prosecutors’ report on Marion newspaper raid excuses abuse of power, leaves questions dangling (Clay Wirestone, Editorial, Kansas Reflector, 8-6-24) The special prosecutors note in the 124-page report that they are not reviewing whether federal laws were broken, or whether officials might be found guilty in a civil case.
   “We understand that state criminal charges might not be possible against some of them,” Meyer said yesterday. “That’s why federal civil suits will continue, why there should be public outrage over some officials’ failure to perform the most fundamental responsibilities of their positions, and why state laws allowing them to escape responsibility may need to be changed.”
   "Officials who carted off computers and cellphones from the Record on a flimsy pretext didn’t do so out of ill will, according to Marc Bennett and Barry Wilkerson. The fact that a Marion County Record reporter had investigated Police Chief Gideon Cody? The fact that 98-year-old newspaper co-owner Joan Meyer died the day after the raid? Both dismissed as immaterial. The damage done to journalism and journalists across the United States? Simply not the their problem.
    Freedom of the Press Foundation advocacy director Seth Stern went even further. “Americans across the country and the political spectrum were outraged by what Record co-owner Joan Meyer called ‘Hitler tactics,’ ” Stern said.
    He added: “While we welcome the news that the former police chief who orchestrated the raid, Gideon Cody, will be criminally charged, he should’ve been charged with more than after-the-fact obstruction — the raid itself was criminal. And Cody is far from the only one at fault here. We hope he and everyone else behind the raid will also be held accountable, through the criminal courts, civil courts, and courts of public opinion. They should never work in law enforcement or government again.”

• Judge who authorized Kansas newspaper raid escapes discipline with secret conflicting explanation (Sherman Smith, Kansas Reflector, 8-4-24)
    "The magistrate who authorized last year’s police raid on the Marion County Record escaped discipline from a state panel by making claims that contradict statements in federal lawsuits about how the search warrants arrived in front of her and whether the police chief swore they were true before she signed them.
    "Magistrate Judge Laura Viar’s secret explanation, obtained by Kansas Reflector, adds a new layer of confusion and mystery to how law enforcement were able to carry out the search and seizure of journalists’ computers and cellphones without regard for state and federal laws that prohibit such police action. It also raises concerns about the low standards set for judges by the Kansas Commission on Judicial Conduct."

• One year after chilling police raid on Kansas newspaper, aftershocks linger in Marion Marisa Kabas and Sherman Smith Kansas Reflector, 8-5-24) Marion County Record reporter Phyllis Zorn and editor Eric Meyer wait for authorities to clear their names. This story is part of a series by Kansas Reflector and The Handbasket to examine the one-year anniversary of the raid on the Marion County Record. Support independent journalism by subscribing to The Handbasket or donating to Kansas Reflector.
     "On Aug. 11, 2023, Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody, with the encouragement of then-Mayor David Mayfield and support from Sheriff Jeff Soyez, trampled constitutionally protected freedoms by ransacking the newspaper office, the publisher’s home, and the home of Mayfield’s political rival. Police seized computers and personal cellphones, and caused fatal stress for the newspaper owner’s 98-year-old mother. And the chilling abuse of power — which upended the lives of Zorn and others, and spawned five federal lawsuits — has cast a shadow over the city that residents fear will linger for years.
     "Eric Meyer, the editor and publisher whose mother, Joan, died a day after police raided their shared home, remains defiant as he sometimes works around the clock to preserve the understaffed newspaper’s reporting prowess in a divided community. Local police still try to intimidate staff, he said, and restrict the newspaper’s access to public records."

• Special prosecutors plan to file criminal charge against police chief who led Marion raid (Sherman Smith Kansas Reflector, 8-5-24) Report faults inadequate law enforcement investigation, clears journalists.
   "If you read special prosecutors’ report about last year’s raid on the Marion County Record newspaper, the abuse of power by law enforcement sounds like an immaculate deception.
   "Special prosecutors plan to charge former Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody with a low-level felony for his actions following the raid he led last year on the Marion County Record and the homes of the newspaper publisher and a councilwoman.
   "But the special prosecutors also concluded that police — despite their misunderstanding of evidence, a rushed investigation, and faulty and unlawful search warrants — didn’t commit any crimes by investigating a baseless suspicion of identity theft or carrying out the raid.
   "Riley County Attorney Barry Wilkerson and Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett released their conclusions in a 124-page report on Monday."
• After Kansas newspaper raid, journalists remain defiant in battle for accountability (Marisa Kabas and Sherman Smith, Kansas Reflector, 8-9-24) Former Marion County Record reporter Deb Gruver: ‘No, you don’t get away with this’

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In the war on clarity, some feel the U.S. military is spending too much time on a program some believe "stifles discussion, critical thinking and thoughtful decision-making," creating the illusion of understanding and control, writes Elisabeth Bumiller in We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint(NY Times, 4-26-10).

 

Is PowerPoint inevitable?

Read the following pieces and at least make the most of it.

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