“The View From the Phlipside” is a media commentary program airing on WRFA-LP, Jamestown NY. It can be heard Monday through Friday around 7:30 AM. The following are scripts which may not exactly match the aired version of the program. Mostly because the host may suddenly choose to add or subtract words at a moment’s notice. WRFA-LP is not responsible for any such silliness or the opinions expressed. You can listen to a live stream of WRFA or find a podcast of this program at wrfalp.com. Copyright 2013-18 by Jay Phillippi. All Rights Reserved. You like what you see and hear? Drop me a line and we can talk.
Programs from the week of June 17, 2018
This Week’s Podcast
My name is Jay Phillippi and I’ve spent my life in and around the media. TV, radio, the movies and more. I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion. Call this the View from the Phlipside.
Book Stuffing
There is a battle raging in the world of digital publishing. One that has a lot of people in the indie writing community really upset, but so far hasn’t garnered a lot of attention generally. That’s largely because it’s not quickly clear who is getting hurt by this. The problem is that it is the entire industry that is slowly being bled, perhaps to death.
The topic is called “book stuffing” and here’s how it works. Amazon runs a program called Kindle Unlimited, which is like a Netflix for books. You pay a monthly fee and can read as much as you want from the books in the program. The authors are paid from a central pool of funds, based on the number of pages read in their books. It’s a system that I have never liked, and like even less now that a glaring defect has been discovered.
A 300 page book, read cover to cover, will generate about $1.50 for the author. What some authors are doing is stuffing their books with all kinds of extraneous “bonus material”. We are talking stuff that has nothing to do with the book you thought you were getting. By padding the books to 3,000 pages, and getting the reader to scan through those pages, an author can make up $13.50 for each “read”. There’s a whole convoluted scam behind all of this, a sub-industry of people who ghostwrite long volumes of “stuffing” for pay.
Amazon has been in catch up mode for a while. They outlawed putting the Table of Contents at the end of a book, and are trying to curb bonus “Special Offers” with links at the beginning of the book that take you to the end. Newer model Kindles are more specific about how they count pages, but there are plenty of older models still in use that can be scammed. The top book-stuffers can make up to 1.2 million dollars a year. Amazon is taking some of the worst offenders to court.
So who gets hurt here? Amazon’s damage appears to be mostly to its reputation, since the book-stuffers are also big spenders through the digital giant’s marketing arm. Readers are hurt because they get books that are mostly junk for the money that they are spending. Legit authors lose because so much money is scammed out of the central pot each month.
But the real loser is the indie publishing world, I think. We are still fighting to overcome the scorn long associated with the words “self published”. Anything that delays the death of that scorn, damages indie authors for years to come.
Future For Comments
I went back into my files to take a look for something I seemed to remember. Lurking in the dark corners of my memory (and the number of those corners seem to be growing each year), was the thought that I had talked about comment sections on this show at some point. It was August of 2016 and NPR had just eliminated the comments section on their web page. I advocated that it was an overall improvement of the digital environment. In the time that has passed since that last commentary, I haven’t seen much to change my mind. Comment sections are still too easily and too often dominated by trolls.
To this day, one of the most annoying issues, in other words, the one most likely to drive me to being a bit snarky in a comments section, are those folks who clearly have not bothered to read the article or post. I must admit that I occasionally fall into the “reacting to the headline” group myself. There is a startup out there that might just have a piece of the puzzle to make comment sections useful again. Or at least less toxic.
With its roots in Matter, a venture capital accelerator trying to, in their words “…create a more robust media ecosystem…” the folks at reallyread.it have created mechanism that requires you to read the entire article before you will be permitted to comment. Created by childhood friends Bill Loundy and Jeff Camera, reallyread.it is an extension for the Chrome browser that tracks what you click on and how thoroughly you read it. But that’s only scratching the surface. It can also be used as a way to follow what is being read in the larger community, see what’s being commented on and, after you read the posts in question, encourages you to join in.
The project is still in its infancy at the moment. With only a couple hundred users yet, there is still a lot of growth required before it has any profound impact on the toxicity levels out there. There are a variety of other folks trying to do the same thing.
It’s really an old concept that many of us learned in childhood. The goal is to get people to have some “skin in the game”. That phrase, which may date back to Shakespeare, anticipates that folks who want to be involved need to make an investment. In this case, investing the time to actually read what they plan to discuss.
Sounds like a huge step in the right direction to me.
Here We Go Again!
This
may be the single most depressing topic I’ve ever commented on in
the almost decade long history of this program. I don’t like it, I
don’t want to believe it but it’s pretty clear that it’s the
truth.
may be the single most depressing topic I’ve ever commented on in
the almost decade long history of this program. I don’t like it, I
don’t want to believe it but it’s pretty clear that it’s the
truth.
Which
doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be trying to change it.
doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be trying to change it.
What
sad and depressing fact has forced its way into my attention? A
study being published this month in the professional journal
Marketing Science says that negative political advertising works. In
fact, it works better than positive political advertising.
sad and depressing fact has forced its way into my attention? A
study being published this month in the professional journal
Marketing Science says that negative political advertising works. In
fact, it works better than positive political advertising.
The
authors of this dreadful truth are Yanwen Wang of the University of
British Columbia in Vancouver, Michael Lewis of Emory University in
Atlanta; and David A. Schweidel of Georgetown University in
Washington, D.C.. They looked at the advertising done in political
races in 2010 and the U.S. Senate races in 2012. The study looked
at political advertising and what impact it appeared to have on the
vote.
authors of this dreadful truth are Yanwen Wang of the University of
British Columbia in Vancouver, Michael Lewis of Emory University in
Atlanta; and David A. Schweidel of Georgetown University in
Washington, D.C.. They looked at the advertising done in political
races in 2010 and the U.S. Senate races in 2012. The study looked
at political advertising and what impact it appeared to have on the
vote.
What
they discovered is exactly what most of us don’t want to hear.
That negative advertising works. And it works better than positive
advertising. There is the interesting note in the study that says
that negative ads work better when they come from the candidate
directly. Negative ads from political action committees did not have
the same impact. And it’s not even close. Candidate ads were
about twice as effective as the PAC ads. This especially apparent
when it comes to voter turnout.
they discovered is exactly what most of us don’t want to hear.
That negative advertising works. And it works better than positive
advertising. There is the interesting note in the study that says
that negative ads work better when they come from the candidate
directly. Negative ads from political action committees did not have
the same impact. And it’s not even close. Candidate ads were
about twice as effective as the PAC ads. This especially apparent
when it comes to voter turnout.
So
with this research in hand, I am certain that political advisors
nationwide will push every candidate to “go negative”. I mean
why not? If it works, why wouldn’t you do it?
with this research in hand, I am certain that political advisors
nationwide will push every candidate to “go negative”. I mean
why not? If it works, why wouldn’t you do it?
It’s
not even as if negative political advertising is something new. We
have a long and nasty history of political advertising that includes
attack ads and smear campaigns. It’s unfortunate that we haven’t
outgrown the practice. Choosing our political leaders based on who
we hate more seems to me to be a less than ideal method for a nation
as educated and well off as we have been for a century or more.
not even as if negative political advertising is something new. We
have a long and nasty history of political advertising that includes
attack ads and smear campaigns. It’s unfortunate that we haven’t
outgrown the practice. Choosing our political leaders based on who
we hate more seems to me to be a less than ideal method for a nation
as educated and well off as we have been for a century or more.
At
some point the voters need to take responsibility for this. We need
to pay more attention to the positives, and push back on the
negatives. A future that is built on the after effects of “no, no,
no” surely isn’t what all of us want. But candidates and their
campaigns will continue to serve up what works.
some point the voters need to take responsibility for this. We need
to pay more attention to the positives, and push back on the
negatives. A future that is built on the after effects of “no, no,
no” surely isn’t what all of us want. But candidates and their
campaigns will continue to serve up what works.
And
we’ll keep getting what we have gotten for far too long.
we’ll keep getting what we have gotten for far too long.
Call that the View From the Phlipside
Copyright Jay Phillippi, 2018
Theme music for “The View From the Phlipside” and “TVFTP – Podcast” is “Hustle”
Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
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