Things I Have Noticed

Very good detail. Yes, I don't think the Kindle is it either. It's an evolutionary step. Someone (Apple?) will get it right with a device that works, is easy to use, is cheap (or relatively so), and looks good (which the Kindle certainly does not). The dynamics here are different than some of the other gadgets that have taken off. Most provided something that wasn't there before (cell phones) or were just way better designed (iPods). Everybody bought CDs to replace records because, you know, aside from price it was a win-win deal - they sounded better, lasted longer, you could program what to play without lifting a needle, etc. etc. With an e-book reader to take off, it has to offer that level of replacement value over a physical book, and none of them, Kindle included, have achieved that yet. But I think it will come. Initially it may still be a niche device even so, but if the right unit comes along at the right time, it might really start something.
 
I don't think it's going to come from us, though. The publishers always hang back. The booksellers, like Amazon, try too many wild schemes, and get burned, give up. The electronics companies come in enthusiastic, then get bored with book publishing and leave. I think e-readers are going to take off out of the communications industry -- from magazines and newspapers, where it's downloadable like iTunes, and then it will move to books.
 
There have been two recent studies, one in America and one in Canada, that show those who play video games usually have more income, are more social, are more likely to be married or date frequently if single, spend more time with their families if they have kids, are more likely to be athletic and spend just as much time reading books as those who don't play video games. And half of them are women. :)
 
Which tells me Nintendo's strategy toward expanding the audience beyond hardcore gamers is doing well... :)
 
The studies are showing that the stereotype of the hardcore gamer is pretty much non-existent. Here's what they have:

The average age of a gamer is 40 and half of them are women. 82 percent play video games an average of around 7 hours a week. 55 percent of all gamers are married, 48 percent have children and 57% of those who have kids regularly play the games with their kids as family time. (I'm sure the Wii has helped with that.)

Gamers who are single are highly social and twice as likely to go out o a date than non-gamers and 9% more likely to go out with friends than non-gamers. Gamers are 11% more likely to play sports than non-gamers and spend the same amount of time reading books. Gamers also make more money on average than non-gamers (which makes sense since games aren't cheap.)

It's really the first statistic that just slays me -- 40 and female. The interesting thing is whether the media will ever accept this image over the 20 year old guy in the parents' basement. How iconic will we cling to being, despite statistics to the contrary?
 
TSOTNW, while she plays computer poker every night on her PC, has never been much of a 'gamer.' However, she is quite enjoying the Wii, and spends a lot of time playing bowling and golf on it (she's very much into sports that are "her against the course" sort of thing rather than overt competition). For the same reason, she's been enjoying the Guitar Hero series of games, using the guitar-shaped controller to more-or-less play along with well-known songs (although we only know, and like, about a quarter of the songs, those from about 1980 and earlier... Most of the recent songs seem to be nothing but male singers screaming quite hoarsely, as if they're about to expire.)
 
ROCKET SHEEP SIGHTING -

From the pages of Road and Track magazine:
German police are trying to find the owner of a sheep that outran squad cars and beat up a police dog. The animal reportedly reached speeds of 30mph, bounded over the hoods of patrol cars being used as roadblocks and chased off pursuing police dogs with a few powerful head butts. It was eventually captured when it stopped to chow down on fresh grass in a nearby field.

Our Sheepie does get around...
 
The B and N near me has recently (6 months or so kind of recent) expanded it's SSF section and moved it closer to the center aisle. I was kind of surprised, it used to be 2 shelves in the very back, now it has like 4 (granted, being R.A.Salvatores home town he has like 2 of them to himself but...)
 
KatG said:
The studies are showing that the stereotype of the hardcore gamer is pretty much non-existent. Here's what they have:

The average age of a gamer is 40 and half of them are women. 82 percent play video games an average of around 7 hours a week. 55 percent of all gamers are married, 48 percent have children and 57% of those who have kids regularly play the games with their kids as family time. (I'm sure the Wii has helped with that.)

Gamers who are single are highly social and twice as likely to go out o a date than non-gamers and 9% more likely to go out with friends than non-gamers. Gamers are 11% more likely to play sports than non-gamers and spend the same amount of time reading books. Gamers also make more money on average than non-gamers (which makes sense since games aren't cheap.)

It's really the first statistic that just slays me -- 40 and female. The interesting thing is whether the media will ever accept this image over the 20 year old guy in the parents' basement. How iconic will we cling to being, despite statistics to the contrary?
Click to expand...

Just an observation... but gaming has become a community type thing in the last 5 or so years... those 20 somethings are still playing, but they have jobs now (the lucky ones at least). I'm what you'd consider a hardcore, 20 something gamer, with a job. I play FPS games, I've played in leagues and tournaments for both Clancy's Rainbow Six games and Counter Strike, and I don't think I've EVER played with a 40 something female... and I've played in hundreds of servers and logged hundreds and hundreds of hours. It's a different world out there with liesure games and WOW type MMORPG's allowing a more relaxed, less skill based experience.
 
WyrvenGuard said:
Just an observation... but gaming has become a community type thing in the last 5 or so years... those 20 somethings are still playing, but they have jobs now (the lucky ones at least). I'm what you'd consider a hardcore, 20 something gamer, with a job. I play FPS games, I've played in leagues and tournaments for both Clancy's Rainbow Six games and Counter Strike, and I don't think I've EVER played with a 40 something female... and I've played in hundreds of servers and logged hundreds and hundreds of hours. It's a different world out there with liesure games and WOW type MMORPG's allowing a more relaxed, less skill based experience.
Click to expand...

As you say, one of the things that has changed is that the landscape has broadened. The gaming world that you inhabit is still there, of course; it hasn't gone away. What's new is that these other gamers, including the 40-something women, are also playing, but not in those spaces. They're either playing solo or involved in other social-oriented games such as the massive multi-players, etc. When you look at where things are going there, it becomes apparent that the traditional game model (fighting, acquiring loot, etc.) starts to expand to include other 'skills' that allow greater participation by those with more divergent interests. And then you even start to move away from the 'game' space entirely with things like Second Life, which involve people in a very massive virtual world as an alternate reality. All of which provides interesting opportunities for people developing software to take advantage of these new players' interests.
 
One of the interesting things is that the Wii and other systems are trying to promote some of their games as a form of exercise, since players can be more mobile doing sports. Instead of the virtual reality they promised us, people seem more interested in simulations, and those simulations are moving from the sports stores and fitness centers into the homes, kind of like track machines.

Wyrven Guard -- your B&N is massively behind. The format for B&N stores has for some time now been to have a large SFF section (or a SF section and a Fantasy section next to each other) towards the center of the store. SFF is now thoroughly integrated with general fiction and various displays as well.
 
Kat, I just hope they stop moving the damn thing because it seems that every time i go in they re-arrange things... I'm always looking for way longer than I have to just to find what it is I want... and then I end up browsing for another hour lol.

In the future... I think B and N should have moving walkways labeled with their destination "SFF" "Non-Fiction" "Sports" "Kama Sutra" "Cooking" "Hobbies" "R.A.Salvatore" (for those of us who live in the central massachusetts are and have to sift through massive overstock on his books...)

I don't want to walk anymore... just read :)
 
But then people wouldn't browse and buy and publishing would be sunk. Browsing is the essence of book shopping. :)
 
you'd browse as soon as you made it to your destination. wait till we travel in tubes... :)
 
I have noticed - please disregard the disingenuousness of that opening - that Kevin and my book is now available at Lulu at an outrageous price due to the full color printing. Find it here at http://www.lulu.com/content/3692967 and applaud Kevin's patience and hard work to make it happen. All I did was copy files I'd already written, play like I was formatting the stuff, and then conning Kevin into doing all the hard work. Anyway, the book finally worked its way through the maze and is availabble.
I have a proof copy on order, Kevin. After I check it; I'll order yours.
 
Yay! Okay, I need Lulu help here. I've never bought anything from them before. I don't think I can afford the printed paperback at the price they have listed, but I can download it for $2 and get it electronically? Does that get me the art too, or just the text?
 
Sounds to me like she's volunteering to be the guinea pig on that one... :D

I'm eager to see how the whole thing looks too. I can also assure you that Dan has undoubtedly made a resolution that becoming a full time publisher is not in the cards for his second career... :)
 
Okay, I'll get it after Thanksgiving.

There are companies that are now in the business of selling carbon off-set credits -- essentially they plant millions of trees for companies to use to off-set potential penalties from the government for carbon pollution, on the plan that the trees will gradually remove that carbon from the air and make it oxygen. There are of course problems with this -- the companies need to reduce carbon pollution as well as try to help correct it, the trees are a very long-term, not necessarily reliable corrective measure, and the little market is growing so fast and profitable, that it could cause a problem with land being used for carbon tree farming instead of planted for food, though the industry claims they're mostly using land that isn't very usable for farming.

Now who knows how long this is going to last -- maybe ten years? But that's millions of trees we get, and without the usual arm twisting that we had to do with the short-sighted logging industry. This just bowls me over as a new "growth" industry. Profitable environmentalism. And it's international apparently.
 
Proof copy received today. Looks like we planned it though your art may be a bit darker than what we thought.
TLWSHLWM finally looked at the book. She's very much impressed with your artwork. Maybe she'll get around to reading the stories.
 
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