Full Fathom Five Digital’s Samantha Streger on “Getting Past Genre in Digital Acquisitions”
Getting Past Genre in Digital Acquisitions
By:
The growth of ebook publishing has heralded the growth of genre publishing—and it’s no wonder: Readers gravitate toward online communities that mirror their interests. By publishing genre-oriented ebooks, publishers and authors can cater to established communities of readers.
And since ebooks can often be produced inexpensively and sold at lower prices than many of their print counterparts, they’re perfect for those communities of voracious readers. At the height of the ebook boom, a low-priced, commercial genre title could find amazing traction. The author Amanda Hocking is one famous example of this type of success. Between 2010 and 2011, her self-published, $2.99 paranormal romance ebooks sold over a million units.
But the boom years are over, and many of the hit-making formulas acquiring editors and indie authors developed just a few years ago are bringing diminishing returns. Facing a much more competitive market than ever before, digital fiction publishers need to rethink their acquisition strategies.
Today, a paranormal romance ebook priced at $2.99 is just one of many thousands of paranormal romance ebooks priced at $2.99 or less. And that’s to say nothing of the huge number of ebooks that are available for free. Many publishers have found that the value of giving away free ebooks in order to build up reviews has all but disappeared.
Genre fiction in particular risks becoming a victim of its own success. Because it’s become an established winner in the digital space, the marketplace is now so over-saturated that digital publishers can’t afford not to think more creatively about how they acquire new content.
That was our guiding principle in October 2014 when we launched Full Fathom Five Digital. We planned to release commercial fantasy, romance, horror and thriller ebooks—but how to stand out in a sea of these genres? The experiment is still in its early days, but we’ve already learned a lot about what seems to work and what doesn’t when it comes to digital acquisitions. Here are five of them:
Thank you Thank you iKrimson
The Ultimate Science Fiction Game
Fans Have Dropped $77M on This Guy’s Buggy, Half-Built Game
Star Citizen creator Chris Roberts. photo by Zachary Scott
The United Empire of Earth Navy caused quite a stir last November when it announced that it would be putting 200 decommissioned Javelin Destroyers up for sale. Each 1,132-foot-long spaceship has the sort of amenities that your average interstellar mercenary finds hard to resist: four primary thrusters, 12 maneuvering thrusters, a heavily armored bridge, private quarters for a captain and an executive officer, six cargo rooms, general quarters for a minimum of 23 crew members, and a hangar big enough to accommodate a gunship. There’s even a lifetime insurance policy.
The document that announced the Javelins’ impending sale took pains to stress that these warships were fixer-uppers. “They are battle-hardened and somewhat worse for wear,” it read, “and have been stripped of the weapons systems.” Thus, any would-be buyer would eventually have to shell out extra to equip the 20 gun turrets and the two torpedo launchers. The asking price for each ship: $2,500. And that wasn’t some form of fictional futuristic space bucks; it was 2,500 real dollars. Actual, real, present-day American Earth dollars.
Despite those caveats, all 200 Javelins sold out. In less than a minute.
The sale brought in half a million dollars for Cloud Imperium Games, the company behind the space-exploration and combat videogame Star Citizen. Cloud Imperium has hit upon a truly futuristic business model. There’s nothing new about inviting players to spend real money for virtual goods—a vehicle or weapon or article of clothing that can only be used inside a virtual gameworld. What’s new about Star Citizen is that most of its goods are doubly virtual—they can only be used inside the gameworld, and the gameworld doesn’t actually exist yet. In fact, its massively multiplayer universe may not be up and running for several more months. Or several more years. Or … longer.
‘Please give me another book.’
from Bend, Oregon’s The Bulletin
Best-selling author to launch imprint for children’s books
By Alexandra Alter / New York Times News Service
Novelist James Patterson is so prolific, his annual output rivals that of many small publishing houses. Last year, with help from his stable of co-authors, he published 16 novels and sold around 20 million copies of his books.
Now Patterson is seeking to extend his brand further, by creating his own publishing imprint, Jimmy Patterson.
The imprint, which will be part of Little, Brown & Co., will release eight to 12 children’s books a year, with a focus on middle grade and young adult fiction.
Patterson will oversee it all, choosing manuscripts and shaping the marketing plan for each title. He will publish four to six of his own children’s books a year under the new imprint and will acquire books by other writers.
“We’re not going to buy a lot of books, but if we buy them, we’re going to publish them with gusto,” said Patterson, who announced the initiative during BookExpo America, the publishing industry’s annual trade convention.
A handful of other writers have moved into publishing roles and created their own imprints and book packaging businesses. Author Lizzie Skurnick started a young adult imprint, Lizzie Skurnick Books, which publishes new editions of classic young adult novels dating from the 1930s to the 1980s. Novelists Lauren Oliver and James Frey both created their own book packaging companies, allowing them to acquire and commission works by other writers and sell them to publishers.
Here’s a tasty one to end the week.
James Frey Sci-Fi Book Proposal Has Fox 2000 & Publishers In Launch Mode
EXCLUSIVE: Here’s a tasty one to end the week. I’m hearing that James Frey has hatched a proposal for an untitled science fiction space franchise: book publishers are hot and bothered, and Fox 2000 is in talks to set it up as a feature with Marisa Paiva overseeing for the studio. The working title is Space Runners, but I don’t have any more specific information than that. This would be produced by Joe and Anthony Russo, who’d be producing with Frey and Mike Larocca. from the Russo’s Getaway Productions banner. They are already plenty busy as directors, with Captain America: Civil War, the next two Avengers installments, and the Ghostbustersspinoff that has Channing Tatum attached.
I Am Xevious
GameStop to become a retro gaming destination
Gamestop isn’t just accepting the old consoles for trade-ins, the company aims to be a new destination for retro gamers everywhere. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to find priceless, old E.T. game cartridges in stores because GameStop will be selling its retro games through an online shop after each game goes through its Texas-based refurbishment center.
You can start trading in retro games, consoles, and accessories as soon as April 25th, but they won’t be available for purchase until about eight weeks after that. We received word of GameStop’s retro gaming pilot program last week, and now we’ve found new details about how the program will work. According to John Haes, who is the head of the division, Gamestop will accept games, consoles and first-party accessories for Nintendo 64, Super Nintendo, NES, first generation Playstation, Sega Dreamcast, and Sega Genesis; but, they won’t be taking any aftermarket controls, like these by Mad Catz.
Ignore the critics because what do they know?
10 rules for making it as a writer, by Dennis Lehane
By Anita Singh, Arts and Entertainment Editor
Dennis Lehane, author of Mystic River, at the 2015 Hay Festival Photo: Warren Allott
Dennis Lehane is the author of a dozen novels including Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone and Shutter Island. His television credits include seasons of The Wire and Boardwalk Empire. His latest book, World Gone By, is out now.
Read whatever you can lay your hands on
We were working class. There were no books. There were some encyclopaedias – I always say it was the day my father didn’t see the salesman coming. And there was a Bible. I read the Bible from cover to cover when I was a kid. The Bible is an amazing piece of narrative storytelling. Then my mother heard from the nuns – probably the only nice thing a nun ever said about me – that I liked to read. So my mother took me to the library. To this day, I’m a big benefactor of libraries. Without libraries I couldn’t be sitting here.
Write out of necessity
I started writing when I was too poor to go out and entertain myself. I was living in an over-55s community in Florida where my parents had a little house. I was broke and staying at their house. I was 25 and had no money. I said, ‘I’m going to write to entertain myself.’
No More Dark Arts
Once a dark art, opposition research comes out of the shadows for 2016 campaigns
By Evan Halper
A man attempts to block a political operative’s video camera as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker meets in Washington with members of Congress, K Street representatives and GOP donors. (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)
Joe Biden was not the only one who found himself in crisis when a videotape emerged during the 1988 presidential primary exposing him as a plagiarist.The political operatives who had secretly distributed footage of Sen. Biden passing off the words of a British politician as his own also had a big problem on their hands.
Their disclosure nearly derailed the candidacy of the rival the operatives worked for, Michael S. Dukakis. He fired them and issued a major mea culpa.
Don’t expect any such apologies in this year’s presidential race.
Political opposition research, once a mostly unmentioned dark art, has turned into a garish, multimillion-dollar enterprise complete with logos, marketing strategies and indiscriminate, real-time streaming of the work product onto social media.
No More Meat-paste
Taco Bell, Pizza Hut: Artificial ingredients getting booted
By CANDICE CHOI
NEW YORK (AP) — Taco Bell and Pizza Hut say they’re getting rid of artificial colors and flavors, making them the latest big food companies scrambling to distance themselves from ingredients people might find unappetizing.
Instead of “black pepper flavor,” for instance, Taco Bell will start using actual black pepper in its seasoned beef, says Liz Matthews, the chain’s chief food innovation officer.
The Mexican-style chain also says the artificial dye Yellow No. 6 will be removed from its nacho cheese, Blue No. 1 will be removed from its avocado ranch dressing and carmine, a bright pigment, will be removed from its red tortilla strips.
Matthews said some of the new recipes are being tested in select markets and should be in stores nationally by the end of the year.
The country’s biggest food makers are facing pressure from smaller rivals that position themselves as more wholesome alternatives. Chipotle in particular has found success in marketing itself as an antidote to traditional fast food. In April, Chipotle announced it had removed genetically modified organisms from its food, even though the Food and Drug Administration says GMOs are safe.
Critics say the purging of chemicals is a response to unfounded fears over ingredients, but companies are nevertheless rushing to ensure their recipes don’t become disadvantages. In recent months, restaurant chains including Panera, McDonald’s and Subway have said they’re switching recipes for one or more products to use ingredients people can more easily recognize.
ENDGAME Ancient Societies Who’s Who
Endgame Ancient Societies: Who’s Who and What Are They Up to – May 25, 2015
by JoJo Stratton
Overview: Stella V is searching for something called The Truth (The Ancient Truth). She spent most of her life kept in seclusion by Wayland Vyctory. Recently she ran away from Wayland as she began to learn that Wayland had been hiding things from her. As she tries to find who she is, she is learning about something called Endgame.
San Francisco Police Searching for Residents’ Eyeball
San Francisco police keep eye out for missing ‘Eyeball’ mask
The “Eyeball with Hat,” worth $100,000, was one of four original masks worn by the group The Residents, police said.
The mask was also worn in a photo of the band taken in front of the Golden Gate Bridge and used on the back cover of the 1979 “Subterranean Modern” album. The original photo, worth $20,000, was also reported stolen, police said.
Saturn Incomparably Opposed
See a Rare View of Saturn’s Rings
by Dan Kedmey
It’s the best time of year to view Saturn’s rings
Saturn will come closer to earth this weekend than at any other time of the year, giving us earthbound creatures an incomparable view of its rings. For a closer look, “community observatory” Slooh trained Internet-connected telescopes on the planet during peak viewing hours. The images are shown in the video above, which includes expert commentary from Slooh astronomer Will Gater and Cornell University planetary scientist Dr. Jonathan Lunine.
Space Rocks For Sale
from The Washington Post
The House just passed a bill about space mining. The future is here.
Artist concept of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) 70-metric-ton configuration launching to space. (NASA/MSFC)
For as long as we’ve existed, humans have looked up at the stars — and wondered. What is up there? Who is out there?
Now, to that list of questions we can add: And CAN I HAVE IT?
The United States has already shown its penchant for claiming ownership of space-based things. There are not one, not two, but six U.S. flags on the moon, in case any of you other nations start getting ideas. (Never mind that the flags have all faded to a stateless white by now.)
So it only makes sense that American lawmakers would seek to guarantee property rights for U.S. space corporations. Under the SPACE Act, which just passed the House, businesses that do asteroid mining will be able to keep whatever they dig up:
Any asteroid resources obtained in outer space are the property of the entity that obtained such resources, which shall be entitled to all property rights thereto, consistent with applicable provisions of Federal law.
This is how we know commercial space exploration is serious. The opportunity here is so vast that businesses are demanding federal protections for huge, floating objects they haven’t even surveyed yet.
Some People Should Be Mauled And Have Their Faces Torn Off
Pit Bull Found Hanged From Metal Chain On Bridge
DEKALB COUNTY, Georgia (CBS Atlanta) — DeKalb County police come across a disturbing scene after finding a pit bull hanged from a bridge.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports the dog was found Wednesday morning tied to a metal chain and hanging from a bridge on Kelly Lake Road.
“Detective are looking to identify a possible owner of the dog and any information about who may be responsible,” DeKalb County police spokeswoman Mekka Parish told the Journal-Constitution. “They believe this was an intentional act.”
Go New Canaan Go
from New Canaan News
New Canaan grads team up on film project
Martin B. Cassidy
Nicola Scandiffio, left, is the producer, and Abigail Schwarz, the writer and director of “Those Who Wander” a dark comedy about a college spring break road trip. Scandiffio and Schwarz, both graduates of New Canaan High School, are seen here at a recent screening of the film in Ridgefield. Photo: Contributed Photo
Sometime in 2011, at the suggestion of mutual acquaintances, New Canaan High School graduate Abigail Schwarz met up after her first year at New York Film Academy with another New Canaan grad, Nicola Scandiffio. Both, it seemed, shared a passion for movies and the film industry.
The two hit it off and ended up working together on a project, and the result was “Those Who Wander,” a coming-of-age film involving a spring break road trip. It was written and directed by Schwarz and produced by Scandiffio.
The duo recently premiered the film, which was shot mostly in New Canaan and other Fairfield County towns, at the Ridgefield Playhouse. The house was packed heavily with local financial backers, both small and large, including best selling novelist James Frey, Schwarz said. Altogether, more than 400 people backed the film with online contributions, with another $130,000 being kicked in by others, including Frey, Schwarz said.
“Almost all of our investors were local within the Fairfield County area, so that was something that was really important to us,” Schwarz said of the screening. “It was a night to show the film and say thank you for making it a reality.”
Frey got behind the project in 2013, after reading about the fledgling filmmaker’s efforts in a local news story publicizing their fundraising efforts, Schwarz said.
“Most of the people who came aboard this project actually found us,” Schwarz said. “James found us through local press, and he’s from New Canaan. He called and ask me for the script, read it, and decided he liked it and gave us a substantial investment. We’re very fortunate.”
Spotibucks
Starbucks and Spotify Link Up to Bring Digital Music Into Stores
Starbucks picks Spotify to power in-store music.
After ditching CDs earlier this year, Starbucks is not giving up on providing music to its customers thanks to a new partnership with Spotify.
This fall, the two companies are teaming up to equip all employees in Starbucks’ 7,000 domestic stores with free Spotify Premium subscriptions that normally cost $10 a month—the subscriptions will ultimately power the in-store music. The coffee chain’s 10 million My Starbucks Rewards loyalty members will be able to stream the playlists baristas concoct and vote for what kind of music they would like to listen to, location by location. What’s more, the listening and voting features can be done on either the Spotify or Starbucks app.
Spotify users will also receive points—or stars, in this loyalty program’s vernacular—they can put toward earning free coffee and food.
It’s the first time Starbucks is extending its loyalty program to reward its members for doing more than just buying coffee, but it’s also the latest step in building the chain’s app into the go-to app for other brands.
For the past year, rumors have swirled that Starbucks is building a mobile platform that it will sell to brands looking to break into mobile payments. In September, the brand inked a deal with Uber to include a button on its app that lets users book rides. In March, mobile accounted for 18 percent of Starbucks’ U.S. revenue.
Eighteen-quintillion Full-featured Planets
World Without End – Creating a full-scale digital cosmos.
By Raffi Khatchadourian
No Man’s Sky will let virtual travellers explore eighteen quintillion full-featured planets.
The universe is being built in an old two-story building, in the town of Guildford, half an hour by train from London. About a dozen people are working on it. They sit at computer terminals in three rows on the building’s first floor and, primarily by manipulating lines of code, they make mathematical rules that will determine the age and arrangement of virtual stars, the clustering of asteroid belts and moons and planets, the physics of gravity, the arc of orbits, the density and composition of atmospheres—rain, clear skies, overcast. Planets in the universe will be the size of real planets, and they will be separated from one another by light-years of digital space. A small fraction of them will support complex life. Because the designers are building their universe by establishing its laws of nature, rather than by hand-crafting its details, much about it remains unknown, even to them. They are scheduled to finish at the end of this year; at that time, they will invite millions of people to explore their creation, as a video game, packaged under the title No Man’s Sky.
The game’s chief architect is a thirty-four-year-old computer programmer named Sean Murray. He is tall and thin, with a beard and hair that he allows to wander beyond the boundaries of a trim; his uniform is a pair of bluejeans and a plaid shirt. In 2006, frustrated by the impersonal quality of corporate game development, Murray left a successful career with Electronic Arts, one of the largest manufacturers of video games in the world. He believes in small teams and in the idea that creativity emerges from constraint, and so, in 2008, he and three friends founded a tiny company called Hello Games, using money he raised by selling his home. Since then, its sole product has been a game called Joe Danger, about a down-and-out stuntman whose primary skill is jumping over stuff with a motorcycle. Joe Danger, released in several iterations, earned a reputation for playability and humor. (In one version, it is possible to perform stunts as a cupcake riding a bike.) But it was hardly the obvious predecessor to a fully formed digital cosmos. No Man’s Sky will, for all practical purposes, be infinite. Players will begin at the outer edges of a galaxy containing 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 unique planets. By comparison, the game space of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas appears to be about fourteen square miles.
From the moment Murray unveiled a hastily built trailer for No Man’s Sky, in late 2013, on the Spike TV network, anticipation for the game has taken on an aspect of delirium.
Amazon Picks Up Alex Morgan and Full Fathom Five’s Kid Series THE KICKS
Amazon Greenlights Six Kids Pilots
Amazon’s new live-action kids pilot, ‘The Kicks,’ is based on a book series by U.S. soccer star Alex Morgan.
Amazon Prime members will be able to watch and vote on the four animated episodes and two live-action episodes during the company’s next kids pilot season this summer.
Amazon Studios has greenlit six kids pilots, which will debut during its next kids pilot season this summer.
The order includes four animated pilots — The Adventures of Knickerbock Teetertop, Lost In Oz, Lily the Unicorn and Bear in Underwear — and two live-action pilots — A History of Radness and The Kicks.
Amazon Prime members will be able to watch and provide feedback on which pilots they want turned into Amazon original series.
“These new pilots will bring sophisticated stories and unique points of view that we hope will resonate well with kids and families,” Amazon Studios’ head of kids programming, Tara Sorensen, said in a statement. “We’re very excited to be working with such passionate creative teams and look forward to sharing these projects with our customers later this year.”
Amazon’s latest pilots feature an accomplished roster of creative talent.
The Kicks, about a star soccer player who switches schools and has to rally her new team, is based on a book series by U.S. women’s soccer player, and Olympic gold medalist, Alex Morgan. The series was adapted for the pilot by David Babcock, whose credits include Brothers & Sisters and Gilmore Girls. The project’s executive producers include novelist James Frey and his company Full Fathom Five. The pilot was directed by Elizabeth Allen Rosenbaum, whose credits include Ramona & Beezus and Aquamarine.
[ click to continue reading at THR ]
VARIETY – Amazon Studios Greenlights 6 Pilots in Next Wave of Kids’ Programming
Bret Easton Ellis’ ORPHEUS
King James Buys The Bulls
LeBron James owns the Bulls, and the team’s Wikipedia page briefly proved it
LeBron James showed again that he owns the Bulls. Don’t believe it? Check the team’s Wikipedia page.
Okay, you won’t see that there now (and it’s yet another reminder to not to take anything you read on Wikipedia as gospel). But the short-lived edit, made after Game 6 of the Cavaliers-Bulls playoff series, reflected the fact that James is the Human Season-Ender for Chicago.
By helping his Cavs advance to the Eastern Conference finals — his fifth straight appearance in that round, after four in a row with the Heat — James improved his personal postseason record in series against the Bulls to 4-0, including a 16-5 mark in all games played. Some people look at LeBron James and see an unprecedented blend of size, strength and talent. The Bulls look at him and see tee times next week.
Age Of The Technosexual
The Secret World of Tinder: are we really all technosexuals?
By Gerard O’Donovan
Pete is one of the many dating app-users featured in Channel 4’s The Secret World of Tinder Photo: Rory Mulvey
“We’re living in a technosexual world now,” said one contributor to The Secret World of Tinder (Channel 4). Which, on the evidence presented by this entertaining documentary, was definitely overstating the case.
But as an introduction to how the advent of dating apps has “revolutionised” the way in which people in Britain can meet potential partners – for one drink, one night or something more long term – this was interesting. Especially for someone who remembers antediluvian times when it was considered daring to answer an ad in the personal columns.
No doubt about it, the endless number of dating apps – Tinder, PlentyofFish, Lovoo, Grindr et al – increases opportunity, if not necessarily satisfaction or even take-up. The more recherché your sexual tastes, it seems, the more useful apps are likely to be, as evidenced by a man whose penchant for “puppy play” (leashes, collars and lots of sniffing, with men rather than actual dogs) went largely unfulfilled until he discovered the gay “kink and fetish” app Recon.
• 30 great opening lines in literature
For those with more mainstream preferences, the gap between opportunity and fulfilment seemed wider. Recent reports that upwards of 40 per cent of Tinder users are already married weren’t specifically addressed here.
But the high sleaze factor was; with all the usual warnings and didactic anecdotes about the perils of meeting people you’ve only previously communicated with online. The high “fakery” factor was emphasised too – especially regarding the many men who seem to see dating apps as opportunities to pretend to be someone they very much are not in real life.
Or to send photos of their genitals to people who don’t want them.
Naked Mole Rats Are Cool
SCIENTISTS AMAZED BY THE MOLE RAT’S BIZARRE BEHAVIOR
By BAYARD WEBSTER
AGROUP of scientists studying the naked mole rat, a rare hairless rodent that lives in East Africa, have recently found that the seldom-seen creature has one of the most bizarre social behavior patterns of any mammal in the animal kingdom.
Little had been known about the three-inch-long rodents, which spend their entire lives in underground colonies. The researchers, however, found to their amazement that communities of up to 80 or more of the rodents lead an existence in a closed-in underground complex like that of an insect colony and, in many ways, behave exactly like insects.
Their findings included these unusual behavior patterns never before known to exist in rodents:
- One female, selected by methods still unknown, becomes the ”queen” of the colony and, like the queen in a wasp colony, is the only breeding female in the community. The mole rat queen becomes much larger than other females in the colony.
- If the queen is removed from the colony, a few of the remaining females grow larger and seek to take her place. One will prevail and become the new queen.
- Although simpler than the social hierarchy of honeybees or ants, the organization of a naked mole rat colony requires both males and females to perform many specialized chores. These categories include food carriers, nest builders, garbage collectors, tunnel diggers and nursemaids to the queen.
[ click to continue marvelling at the Naked Mole Rat @ NYT ]
Chris Burden Gone
Chris Burden dies at 69: Artist’s light sculpture at LACMA is symbol of L.A.
Artist Chris Burden created Urban Lights, a sculpture in front of the entryway to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, that consists of guniune street lamps from Los Angeles historic past. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
Chris Burden, the protean Conceptual artist who rose from doing controversial performances in the 1970s to become one of the most widely admired sculptors of his generation, died early Sunday at his home in Topanga Canyon. He was 69.
“Urban Light,” Burden’s 2008 sculpture at the entrance to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, has become a symbol of the city. It takes the form of a Classical temple composed from 202 restored cast-iron antique street lamps.
Emasculating Porn
Porn and video game addiction are leading to ‘masculinity crisis’, says Stanford prison experiment psychologist
by DOUG BOLTON
A leading psychologist has warned that young men’s brains are being ‘digitally rewired’ by unprecedented use of video games and pornography
A leading psychologist has warned that young men are facing a crisis of masculinity due to excessive use of video games and pornography.
Psychologist and professor emeritus at Stanford University Phillip Zimbardo has made the warnings, which form a major part of his latest book, Man (Dis)Connected.
In an interview on the BBC World Service’s Weekend programme, Zimbardo spoke about the results of his study, an in-depth look into the lives of 20,000 young men and their relationships with video games and pornography.
He said: “Our focus is on young men who play video games to excess, and do it in social isolation – they are alone in their room.”
“Now, with freely available pornography, which is unique in history, they are combining playing video games, and as a break, watching on average, two hours of pornography a week.”
The Industrial Fish Complex
When Humans Declared War on Fish
Credit Josh Cochra
ON Friday we humans observed V-E Day, the end to one part of a global catastrophe that cost the planet at least 60 million lives. But if we were fish, we would have marked the day differently — as the beginning of a campaign of violence against our taxonomic classes, one that has resulted in trillions of casualties.
Oddly, the war itself was a great reprieve for many marine species. Just as Axis and Allied submarines and mines made the transportation of war matériel a highly perilous endeavor, they similarly interfered with fishing. The ability to catch staple seafoods, like cod, declined markedly. Freed from human pursuit, overexploited species multiplied in abundance.
But World War II also brought a leap in human ingenuity, power and technical ability that led to an unprecedented assault on our oceans. Not only did ships themselves become larger, faster and more numerous, but the war-derived technologies they carried exponentially increased their fishing power.
Take sonar. Before the 1930s, electronic echolocation was a barely functioning concept. It allowed operators to trace the vague contours of the seafloor topography and crudely track the pathway of a large moving object. But the war pushed forward dramatic advances in sonar technology; by its end, sophisticated devices, developed for hunting submarines, had grown infinitely more precise, and could now be repurposed to hunt fish.
Schools of fish could soon be pinpointed to within a few yards, and clearly differentiated from the sea’s bottom. Coupled with high-powered diesel engines that had been developed during the global conflict, the modern fishing vessel became a kind of war machine with a completely new arsenal: lightweight polymer-based nets, monofilament long lines that could extend for miles and onboard freezers capable of storing a day’s catch for months at a time.
Transgender Kraut-rock w/ Jazz Hands ’78
Dorothy Must 5 (NYT Bestseller List Woo-hoo!!)
Biggest Book Ever!
Author Aims to Set New Guinness World Record with World’s Largest Published Novel
Yahaya Baruwa, 27-year-old best-selling Canadian author, aims to do more than just release another commercial success, but also release the world’s largest published novel.
Struggles of a Dreamer: The Battle Between a Dreamer and Tradition will measure 8 ft. 5 in. high and 5 ft. 5 in. wide, resulting in an 11 ft. length when fully opened. The novel will be approximately 200 pages and bound in hardcover, rendered in full color. Due to its size, Struggles of a Dreamer will be crafted by hand, made from a combination of aluminum and tear-resistant paper, all sewn together with nylon stitching.
The novel seems to draw from the author’s own experiences of being a Nigerian immigrant, with characters Tunde, a beggar on the streets of New York City, and Toku’te, the son of a farmer in a faraway land, both testing the boundaries of tradition.
A Heartbreaking Read
My daughter, who lost her battle with mental illness, is still the bravest person I know
The author with daughter Natalie in 2004, soon after publication of their book “Promise You Won’t Freak Out.” (Courtesy of Doris Fuller )
I lost my darling daughter Natalie to mental illness last month. She killed herself a few weeks short of her 29th birthday by stepping in front of a train in Baltimore.
Natalie and I wrote a book together when she was 16: “Promise You Won’t Freak Out: A Teenager Tells Her Mother the Truth About Boys, Booze, Body Piercing, and Other Touchy Topics (and Mom Responds).” The idea of a teenager telling the truth about her secrets was such a startling concept that we were feature-page headliners in the Baltimore Sun and about two dozen other newspapers, went on TV coast to coast, including on one of the morning shows, and got paid to give speeches. “Oprah” called.
In the book, we used a device to signal whenever a wild turn was about to take place: And then . . . . In the introduction, I defined an And then . . . moment as “one of those critical junctures when my cheerful sense that all was right in the world collided with inescapable proof that it wasn’t.”
[Doctor: How I discovered the most important question I should ask every patient]
The book was published to great reviews the week before Natalie finished high school. Amazon named it the best parenting book of 2004. It was nominated for a national prize. It was translated into Lithuanian and Chinese.
And then . . . .