Fun At The Miami Book Fair

We had a great time at the Miami Book Fair International this past weekend. The photo is of our Landstrike booth in the heart of the street fair--a four block area of downtown closed off for nothing but books!

Vendors who'd been there many years said the crowds were down this year. That may be so, but there were plenty of people strolling through, especially Saturday afternoon. And why not--we had three straight days of outstanding weather--sunny, blue sky, low humidity, temps in the upper 70's, low 80's.

We learned a little about Landstrike too. Turns out it's a big hit with teen boys, some of whom evidently were in disaster mode due to the release of the mega-disaster movie "2012." We had plenty of interest from all ages, races, creeds and sexes, but the teen boys were drawn to our booth like flies to honey.

Our favorite was a sixth grade Latino boy who dragged his mom all the way back from the fair exit, as they were leaving, so he could purchase the book. When it turned out mom didn't have any cash--and so had to call dad to come over as well--the boy started reading the book while waiting. By the time the transaction was done, he was well into chapter one and looked like he'd be reading it every step of the way as his family left the fair.

We were pleased to see so many boys interested because it's a difficult group to get to read anything!

So, if you've got a teen boy on your holiday gift list, and he's a reader of action-adventure books, consider Landstrike (the paperback is available on Amazon.com and BN.com for about $15).

[We also found that quite a few adults preferred to download the book to their Kindle readers--they took our card, and sure enough we had a nice little spike in Kindle downloads over the weekend.]

Overall, we enjoyed the fair. Our neighbors, all selling their books, were a terrific group, and helped each other out when they could.

One downer, however, was the five Author Solutions ("ASs") booths around the corner from us. Author Solutions is the parent for a group of self-publishing companies, including our publisher, Xlibris. As we discussed in a prior post, Xlibris (and other ASs companies) pushed some of their authors into ridiculous packages, costing $4000-$10,000, in which they were required to purchase a couple hundred books and then give them away at the fair.

Not only were these packages huge rip-offs for the authors, but they pissed off just about every other legitimate seller at the fair. Many fairgoers suddenly thought they were going to get free books from everyone! Unfortunately, for the most part you got what you paid for at the ASs booths--we picked up some of the free books, and while a couple were not too bad, several were completely unreadable.

If the Miami Book Fair is going to attract quality exhibitors in the future, it will need to make a choice: ban ASs's free book scam that rips off unsuspecting authors, or turn the whole thing into a freebie fest and just forget about the fair's reputation.

Montgomery Co. Gets Smart

Turns out there is some good news out there. Montgomery County has adopted a plan to encourage denser "car-free" growth along it's mass transit corridors, reversing a long-standing policy that has contributed to sprawl and intensified traffic problems there.

As the Washington Post explained in its story on the matter: "Most suburban growth plans--including Montgomery's, until Tuesday--discourage development in congested areas, including those near public transit, and encourage construction in more sparsely populated communities, on the theory that new developments should arise where traffic is still tolerable."

Anyone who's lived in the Washington, D.C. metro area for the past 25 years can tell you how poorly that theory has turned out. Washington is a sprawling city, with developments stretching in all directions over a radius of at least 30 miles. Traffic is worse than ever, with little prospect of improving, and open farmland and forest around the city has all but disappeared.

Arlington County, which has the advantage of being small and having NO large open space to speak of, has pioneered smarter development of denser projects near mass transit hubs. We can't say it's exactly "car-free" over here, but Arlington has grown, and continues to grow, more smartly.

When we moved to the Washington area in 1980, Montgomery County--and Fairfax, too--had quite a bit of open farmland. Now the largest crop in both those counties is townhomes. Much of the development in both those counties has been done in a way that they feed into major highways, without creating the necessary connections for local residents on short trips to by-pass those thorofares, thereby contributing to congestion.

It's interesting to visit Europe, where many cities and towns have very strict zoning regulations that prevent sprawl and preserve the countryside. Those towns and cities seem to end abruptly, unlike American cities, which seem to go on forever, gradually diminishing to smaller developments that sooner or later get absorbed by larger ones. If Europe had American style development laws, there'd be no countryside left.

Montgomery's decision is a good step in the right direction. Washington's outer rim of counties need to consider some similar steps to rein in unmitigated sprawl.

Off To Miami

With the off-year elections over (and depressing), with the days getting shorter, and the weather getting crappy, we haven't been inspired to write much of late.

This weekend, however, we'll be in warm, sunny Miami, promoting our book Landstrike at the Miami Book Fair International.

We'll have a full report when we return, or maybe while we're there. If you're in South Florida, come see us!

Wish we could also report on one or two golf courses down that way, but we'll be working all weekend. Maybe next trip!

Thank You Indeed!

Now GOP Has To Solve Intractable Problems

Republicans in Virginia cruised to a big victory last night after a decade long losing streak. It was a bad night for Democrats, erasing several years of hard fought gains in the House of Delegates and giving Republicans control of the coming reapportionment process.

While part of the blame goes to Creigh Deeds for running a poor campaign, there is plenty of blame to go around. First, history was never on the Democrats' side this time around: not since 1973 has the party in power in the Presidency won the Virginia governor's mansion. Still, that's not enough to explain a landslide 59-41% drubbing.

"Governor" Tim Kaine--who's real job of late has been DNC chairman--can take part of the blame. Democrats have held the governor's mansion for the past 8 years, yet Virginia's main problems have been pretty much the same, especially for the past 4 years. True, those problems are largely in the domain of the legislature, but try telling that to voters.

Another factor is exhaustion after the Obama victory in Virginia. Democrats worked hard for Obama to carry Virginia and give it two Democratic senators and a majority Democratic delegation to the U.S. Congress. With George Bush gone, there just wasn't the enthusiasm among Democratic voters this time around, as reflected by turnout. Meanwhile, conservatives who were lukeward to John McCain last year are now energized, while McDonnell & Co. managed to avoid the kind of divisive campaigns that their predecessors have waged (i.e., appealing to hard core conservatives at the expense of moderate independents).

Nonetheless, Deeds was a big factor, as evidenced by his loss even of Democratic leaning Fairfax County. It was clear throughout the campaign that Deeds had no real understanding of Northern Virginia. He lacked the sophistication of a Mark Warner, or Jim Webb, or Tim Kaine, whereas McDonnell, for all his truly conservative views, still projected that sophistication.

You can blame Terry McAuliffe in part for this. Had he not jumped into the race (and yes, we did support him in the primary, although we always had big reservations) Brian Moran would have won and done much better in NoVa (probably preventing the loss of at least three legislative seats).

There is a silver lining in all this, however. With their sweep of statewide offices and their large majority in the House of Delegates, Republicans now have to prove they can govern. It won't be easy. Their party is still badly divided between myopic small-county cultural conservatives who could give a damn about Northern Virginia's growth problems, and more practically minded pols who realize they have to solve problems if they want to continue in office.

With the far right punishing anyone who even thinks about raising taxes, McDonnell will find his options severely limited. The logical way to fund transportation improvements is to raise gasoline taxes. Those taxes are low in Virginia and have not kept up with the inflation of gas prices. McDonnell says he has a plan to improve roads without raising taxes, but his plan won't work. The bottom line is that it takes revenue to build roads.

Apart from transportation, the Commonwealth faces a dire budget situation that will be painful to resolve. Although an improving economy nationwide will help, McDonnell will again face tough choices with very limited options.

Finally, the culture warriors on the right will no doubt push McDonnell, Cuccinelli and their brethren in the general assembly to enact unpopular laws that will reignite the left.

Unfortunately, Democrats are still faced with the nasty prospect that McDonnell and his cronies will control the upcoming reapportionment process, which will make all that more difficult for Democrats to gain legislative seats in the coming decade.

Democrats now need to find some new leadership at the statewide level. We hope that out of chaos, strong new leaders will emerge!

Terrible Night For Dems In Virginia

Pretty disastrous night for the Democratic Party in Virginia, although it doesn't look like the GOP will pick up as many House of Delegate seats as they might have. More a reflection on the top of the ticket.

Tomorrow: we'll analyze the silver lining in this election.

NFL Should Boost Prostate Cancer Research And Awareness

Now that October's over, we miss all those splotches of pink in NFL football broadcasts.

You see, October is breast cancer awareness month. Pink, of course, is the breast cancer ribbon color, and those breast cancer folks really know how to do up publicity. They had NFL players wearing pink shoes, hats, ribbons, patches; they had refs wearing pink stripes, looking just like the candy-stripers of yore at hospitals. They even had the White House adorned with a huge pink ribbon.

You'd think breast cancer was the only one with a month, ribbon and color. But it's not. It's just that the other cancers haven't caught up in the market for attention.

Now we have nothing against raising awareness of and research on breast cancer. But we think the NFL's priority on pink was a bit misplaced.

You wouldn't know it, but September--also a big month for professional football--was prostate cancer awareness month. Prostate cancer has a ribbon, too--it's sky blue.

You'd think pro football would get on the prostate cancer bandwagon AT LEAST as much as for breast cancer. After all, the NFL is, quite literally, sponsored in large part by the penis. Viagra and Cialis ads compete for attention for men with "erectile dysfunction," which can be caused or contributed to by prostate problems. Then there's all the ads for Flomax, for men who have trouble peeing because of a benign enlarged prostate.

Not to mention that the audience for pro football is just a little skewed toward MEN, and all the players are men.

Prostate cancer is pretty deadly, killing an estimated 28,000 men each year (breast cancer deaths among women are higher, at about 45,000).

So where was all the sky blue and prostate cancer awareness in the NFL in September? There wasn't any (unless you're a Carolina Panthers fan, whose colors include sky blue).

Pink in October is fine. But if the NFL is going to promote breast cancer awareness, it ought to at least put prostate cancer on the same footing!

Xlibris's Shameful Miami Book Fair Promotion

The Curmudgeon will soon be in Miami (Nov. 13-15) to promote his novel, Landstrike, at the Miami Book Fair International. The Miami fair is one of the largest in the world, so it will be a great opportunity to meet readers, not to mention bookstore owners, publishers and the rest of the industry.




We'll have a half-booth all to ourselves at the fair. The cost for the booth is modest--less than $500--plus we'll invest in a few marketing materials to liven the place up.



Pity, then, the poor self-published authors who are shelling out between $4000 and $10,000 to Xlibris Press (with whom we self-published) for the opportunity to "optimize" their book's "exposure to the multi-ethnic community of Miami." The gory details are HERE.

This has got to be the biggest rip-off in the self-publishing industry, and book fair officials aren't too happy about it either.

Xlibris, which can get an entire booth for $650, is charging an outrageous sum to self-published authors who simply don't know better. Our experience with Xlibris is that it is a lot better at promoting itself than promoting its authors.



For $10,000, an Xlibris author will get the privilege of a 2-hour book signing slot at the Xlibris booth. (The Curmudgeon will get three whole days at his little booth.)



For that $10,000, the Xlibris author will have to give away his/her books. They're not allowed to sign them. Fortunately, 150 paperback books come with the package--but those books would cost the author $1500, and cost Xlibris even less. And the author could sell them--for a profit--if he had his own booth, instead of giving them away at the Xlibris booth.



The rest of the package isn't worth much. There's an email marketing campaign that Xlibris normally charges $599 for--and that's pretty inflated as it is (and largely worthless). Xlibris also promises a few bookmarks and posters, as well as an "author video" and press releases before and after the event. None of that is worth much.



For about $3000, the author could easily get his/her own booth, print up some very nice posters and other handouts, shoot a video and then sell his/her books at a profit to offset those costs. The author would still have plenty of money to fly down to Miami and stay in a very nice hotel.



Of course, for Xlibris, this is the deal of the century. They're making several grand on each author they can dupe into signing up for this boondoggle. Maybe they should change their motto to "Xlibris: YOU Write OUR Own Success!"

Arlington's Stance on I-66 Is Killing Democrats

One issue that's killing Democrats in Virginia is Arlington's steadfast opposition to widening I-66.

Because Arlington is a Democratic stronghold, statewide candidates who want to court Arlington voters are required to adhere to the I-66 orthodoxy here. That, in turn, hurts them in the larger--and Democratic leaning--counties outside the beltway (Fairfax, Prince William and Loudoun). Folks in those counties want better roads, and none is more inadequate than I-66.

Our friend Ben at NLS recently posted his reasoning on why widening I-66 would do no good (it's in the context of a rebuttal to the Washington Post's inexplicable endorsement of Arlington delegate Bob Brink's Republican opponent).

We disagree. Ben's reasoning is that putting more people on I-66 will just add to congestion in Tyson's Corner. That ignores the two fundamental bottlenecks on I-66.

Heading westbound, traffic gets jammed where the double lane Glebe Road on-ramp meets double-lane I-66. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that having a two-lane on-ramp merge into two lanes of interstate highway will quickly jam things up. Adding an additional lane from Glebe Rd. to the Dulles Access Rd. (267) would greatly ameliorate the daily traffic tie-up on I-66 in Arlington. The sad thing is that Arlington's elected officials oppose this fix, even though it is mostly people living and working in ARLINGTON (those getting on at Glebe Rd.) who are hurt by the current abysmal design.

On the eastbound side, there is a similar problem, where the Sycamore Street ramp meets I-66. Too much traffic is coming in from this ramp, causing traffic to slow to a crawl. A little over a mile later, much of that traffic gets off at Glebe Rd. (again proving that much of I-66 traffic is people living and working in Arlington, not just pass-through traffic from the outer suburbs). After Glebe Rd. the traffic clears up. An easy solution to this problem is to extend the ramp from Sycamore St. all the way to the Glebe exit ramp.

These fixes won't solve all of I-66's problems, but they would at least resolve most of the particularly aggravating traffic jams that occur outside of rush hours or against rush hour traffic.

Arlington officials are doing no good for the majority of Arlingtonians by opposing these fixes. While we intend to vote for Bob Brink--because we don't think he's really part of that problem--we do think the Post has a point: it may take getting rid of a few Arlington Democrats to save the rest of Northern Virginia's Democrats, and to bring some sanity to the transportation issue.

Grim Time For Deeds and Dems

A final spate of polls is out in advance of next week's election here in the Commonwealth and there's nothing but bad news for Creigh Deeds and Democrats, as Bob McDonnell has a double-digit lead heading down the stretch.

Here's the data:

Survey USA:
McDonnell 58%
Deeds 41%

Public Policy Polling:
McDonnell 55%
Deeds 40%

Washington Post:
McDonnell 55%
Deeds 44%

There was on tidbit in the polls that we thought was quite interesting--and telling. Survey USA broke out voters who had already voted. The percentage was small--8% of the sample said they'd already voted (presumably via absentee ballot).

Of those, a significant number split their votes. McDonnell leads among early voters by 52%-45%, close to his overall poll numbers. But for Democrats Jody Wagner (Lt. Gov.) and Steve Shannon (Attorney General) the numbers were flipped: both lead their opponents among early voters, Wagner by 53%-44% and Shannon by 56%-44%.

Although none of the polls show Wagner or Shannon beating their opponents, we'll hold out some hope that ticket splitting will give one or both of them a chance to eke out a win.

The biggest problem appears to be turnout, however. Democrats simply have no enthusiasm for Deeds, so many say they don't intend to vote.

This is a tragedy for the entire Democratic ticket, including legislative seats. It looks like the Deeds drag is going to wipe out several years of steady Democratic gains in Virginia, with losses likely in the House of Delegates.

All of which is really too bad for Northern Virginians, who will continue to suffer from lack of transportation funds at the hands of skinflint Republicans, and who will see little progress on other fronts as well.

We'll close with this plea: if you're a Democrat, or an independent, and not enthused about Deeds, please, still go out and vote. You can still make a difference in the other statewide and local races, even if you don't vote for Deeds.

No Subsidy For New News Reporting

Today's Washington Post devotes a large story and a central op-ed piece to a proposal to have the federal government, via the FCC, subsidize a "new model for news reporting."

Sorry, bad idea. Really bad idea.

The reason the Post is giving so much press to this is that former Post Executive Editor Len Downie is one of the figures behind the effort.

Downie argues that the type of journalism that "holds accountable those with power and influence" is now "at risk" due to the decline of the profitable daily newspaper. Accordingly, "American society must now take some collective responsibility for supporting news reporting--as society has, at much greater expense, for public education, health care, scientific advancement, and cultural preservation, through varying combinations of philanthropy, subsidy and government policy."

One problem with the argument is that the news industry is already re-inventing itself quite nicely WITHOUT any government subsidy. That's the word from a report authored by Downie and other journalism professors, and featured in the Post's news story today.

Another problem is that the report in any event appears to focus primarily on print media. It is certainly true that traditional print media is in big trouble financially. But the news media in the U.S. is a little bigger than traditional daily newspapers. It includes television and the internet, which have steadily supplanted newspapers and magazines as the primary sources of Americans' "news."

If anything, it appears we are suffering not from too little news, but too much. Just witness how a family in Colorado allegedly manipulated and duped the entire nation's media over the "balloon boy" incident last week. (Even if the story wasn't a hoax, it wasn't really a story in the end.)

We think there's a vital role for newspapers to play, and Downie and company outline a number of steps that would be useful in supporting that role, including encouraging more non-profit news organizations and supporting print media via philanthropies and universities.

What we don't agree with, however, are two proposals. One is to "reform" public radio and television to be more oriented to local news. Why do we need that? In Washington, we have four private local news stations on the air, some of which have several hours per day of "local" "news" (mostly puff pieces). We also have a cable oriented 24-hour per day local news station, along with local cable weather. We're saturated with local "news" already, much of it irrelevant. Why should taxpayers pay for a "public" incarnation of the same?

A better "reform" of public radio and television would be to finish the conversion of them to what they primarily are now: non-profit organizations, relying on viewer/listener contributions to support themselves. There's no need for a continued government subsidy. Indeed, many programs on public radio and television could easily support themselves on advertising, probably using no more air time than they do now for their periodic fund appeals.

The other proposal, which is far worse, is creation of a "national fund for Local News" from "fees the Federal Communications Commission collects from or could impose on telecom users, broadcast licensees or Internet service providers." The resulting fund would issue grants to "local new organizations for innovations in local news reporting and ways to support it."

This, of course, would be a terrific source of funds for journalism professors such as Downie, but other than that it's hard to see any benefit. Local print media can and will re-invent itself--indeed is re-inventing itself now--without such a fund.

More importantly, we're wary of getting the government involved in the news gathering business. Nothing good ever comes of that, even in the most well-intentioned democracy. As Downie points out, one of the major responsibilities of local news organizations is to hold government accountable. Hard to do when the government is holding the purse strings.

We hope that locals news does successfully re-invent itself. We think it will. Just like politics, we think all news is, fundamentally, local, and there will always be a demand for such. Just keep the government out of it. Please.