The Future in Five Points

In today’s Journal

* Thanks to Heather H
* The Future in Five Points
* Finally Figured It Out
* Oh, But There’s This
* Of Interest

Thanks to Heather H for pointing out that the subscription button on my Patronage & Donations page was flinging error messages in every directiion.

I went back to PayPal and copied the code again, then pasted it in place. It should work fine now.

The Future in Five Points from a recent StreetLib newsletter.

The January 31 newsletter from StreetLib was so informative that I dedided to share some of it here.

I won’t do this often, if at all, in the future. Even if you don’t use them for distribution, I recommend you sign up for their free newsletter. To do so, visit https://www.streetlib.com/, scroll to the bottom of the page, enter your email address and click Subscribe. Now, from StreetLib,

“Accessible books [are] no longer an option for publishers, but a necessity. We have dedicated a webinar, a blog post and also a report on StreetLib Ready to this theme.” (Note: I couldn’t find a way to translate the last one into English.)

“[T]he serial book market continues to grow reflecting the change in users’ reading habits. Among the dedicated and most successful apps there is also Dreame, our distribution partner.” (Hmm. I think I’ll look more deeply into this one myself.)

“The way readers discover new titles is evolving, becoming increasingly social. According to the data reported, as many as 70% of readers use social media to discover new books and 50% love to share what they are reading on social platforms, first of all TikTok.

“Consumption of spoken audio content has increased by +200% in less than a decade!

“The integration of AI technology has, and will increasingly have, an impact on traditional editorial work processes and business models by implementing the way books, ebooks and audiobooks are created, distributed and consumed.”

Also there’s this:

“Kindle Unlimited paid out over half a billion dollars in 2022, mostly to independent authors. $72 million more than in 2021. Yet so much global reporting on the e-book market continues to disregard this data, fueling the tendency to consider the e-book market to have been declining for years now.”

Well, there y’go. Do with the information what you will.

Finally Figured It Out

Not that it matters to you, but I’ve been more than a little preoccupied ever since I received my new desktop computer. That thing still amazes me. This isn’t some huge tower. It measures 7″x7″ and is 1.5″ tall. In fact, it lies flat on my desk beneath the monitor stand.

Anyway, my preoccupation wasn’t with setting the thing up or any of that. The problem was me trying to decide which laptop to use for what. As part of that, I finally decided to continue using my old 14″ ProBook up at the house. It’s heavy, and it has a regular (annoyingly noisy and susceptible to dust) hard drive.

Then it dawned on me: You know how football teams have first, second, and third-string players? Well, I now have a first, second, and third-string writing ‘puter. Barring some sort of catastrophe, I shouldn’t have to buy another computer for myself, ever.

My new first-string writing ‘puter is my former business laptop, a 14″ HP EliteBook with a 500 gig SSD and 8 gigs of DDR4 memory. (If you don’t know what all of that means, it has a large storage capacity and it’s relatively fast.) If I ever go on the road again for any reason, that’s the one I’ll take with me. It’s my writing ‘puter, but the screen is large enough I can also conduct business on it, etc.

My second-string writing ‘puter is my former writing ‘puter, an 11.6″ HP ProBook with a 256G SSD and 4 gigs of DDR3 memory. Love the keyboard, but the screen’s too difficult to see when it isn’t attached to a larger monitor.That one, for the time being, will be turned off and stored as a spare.

(Kind’a reminds me of the several Olympus portable typewriters, all of the same model, that prolific writer Harlan Ellison kept on shelves in his house. When he wore one out, he just took another from the shelf, loaded a fresh ribbon, and kept writing. Come to think of it, my restored laptops probably cost less than his new Olympus typewriters.)

And my third string writing ‘puter is the old 14″ HP ProBook with its HDD. I doubt it will ever see service again other than as the house computer.

Now maybe I can get back to writing.

Oh, But There’s This

After a 22 year old assistant coach impersonated a 13 year old basketball player and took her place in a game, school officials “met with parents of the JV and varsity girls basketball teams, where players from both teams decided not to continue their seasons” (emphasis mine).

Why? Yes, the idiot assistant coach did something stupid. So what now? The players on the teams, who did nothing wrong, are going to punish themselves? And why? So the assistant coach can “see what she’s done”? Are we maybe carrying the “offended” stuff a little far?

This. This is why I escape into my characters’ sensible, realistic world whenever I can.

Talk with you again soon.

Of Interest

See “What are Accessible Ebooks and how to align with new European guidelines” at https://blog.streetlib.com/what-are-accessible-ebooks-and-how-to-align-with-new-european-guidelines/.

See “Marine researcher finds massive eel on Texas beach” at https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/texas-news/marine-researcher-finds-massive-american-eel-on-texas-beach/3180587/. Aliens, anyone?

See “Calls to 911 about self-driving cars gone rogue rise in San Francisco” at https://www.vice.com/en/article/93apqv/san-franciscans-keep-calling-911-about-baffling-self-driving-car-behavior. Am I supposed to be surprised?

See “January 2023 Notes” at https://franktheodat.substack.com/p/january-2023-notes. Good stuff. Should you maybe do something like this to help hold yourself accountable?

See “Barnes & Noble Makes a Comeback” at https://www.thepassivevoice.com/barnes-noble-makes-a-comeback/. This is not a repeat. See PG’s take.

The Numbers

The Journal…………………………………… 760 words

Writing of Wes Crowley: Deputy US Marshal 2 (WCG9SF4)

Day 1…… 3231 words. Total words to date…… 3231
Day 2…… 2990 words. Total words to date…… 6221
Day 3…… 1805 words. Total words to date…… 8026
Day 4…… 2025 words. Total words to date…… 10051

Total fiction words for February……… XXXX
Total fiction words for 2023………… 46873
Total nonfiction words for February… 760
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 21110
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 67983

Calendar Year 2023 Novels to Date…………………… 1
Calendar Year 2023 Novellas to Date……………… 0
Calendar Year 2023 Short Stories to Date… 0
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………………………………… 72
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………………………… 8
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………………… 217
Short story collections……………………………………………… 31

Disclaimer: I am a prolific professional fiction writer because of my zen-like non-process. If you want to learn it too, either hang around or download my Journal Archives at https://hestanbrough.com/the-daily-journal-archives/, read them, and try WITD for yourself.