Masters of Chaos, Chosen Soldier, and Teenage Boys

ByJohn Brown

US Army Special Forces

Nobody can stand up to the US Military’s conventional fighting force using conventional tactics.  Yes, Russia and China have significant militaries and a fight with them would be bloody.  But it’s not likely we’re going to go to war with them.  Instead, as we’ve seen since the 1990’s, we’re likely to fight much smaller groups—Somali warlords, genocidal brutes in the Balkans, terrorist-supporting regimes like the Taliban, unstable dictators like Saddam Hussein, or Islamic extremists who aren’t associated with any nation. 

Those who do try to fight us conventionally get wiped out.  We saw that very clearly with Saddam Hussein.  Which is why the fight went underground.  In this type of war, when the bad guys are hiding among the good, we can’t just rush in and bomb the place to the stone age.  If we do, the local population will soon come to hate our presence and work against us.  And when that happens, we set ourselves up for defeat.

The best way to fight against insurgents is to ally ourselves with friendly portions of the populace who can identify who the insurgents are, which doors to kick in, and can actually kick those doors in themselves, if only they get some support and training. 

Because of this, a strong argument can be made that the US Army’s Special Forces are the most effective tool we have in winning the types of wars we’re likely to fight in the near future.

The US military has a number of special operations forces.  Those you’re probably most familiar with are the Navy SEALs, Delta Force, Rangers, Marine Force Recon, and the Army’s Special Forces (commonly known as Green Berets).  There are other groups like the Air Force’s Combat Control Team, the Army’s 4th Psychological Operations Group, and other black op units that the military doesn’t officially recognize. There is some overlap in the types of things these forces do.  However, each has its own focus, the thing it’s best suited for. The reason why the Army’s Special Forces are so valuable in our current environment is that one of their main missions, the thing they do better than anyone else, is conducting and fighting unconventional wars.

Along with all the other cool stuff that goes along with special operations work, Special Forces troops have to learn how to build rapport and trust because unconventional war is conducted through and by the indigenous population.  Special Forces troops not only have to know how to conduct high-risk missions, they have to be able to train others to do the same, which is why they are all required to learn a second language.  All this people work requires a more mature soldier.  And it shows: the average age of the SF operators is thirty-two, while the average age of a US Marine is nineteen.

I just read two fabulous books on the Army’s Special Forces.  The first is Masters of Chaos by Linda Robinson. Robinson was given unprecedented access.  She traveled with them to the front lines and was allowed to interview and report as no other had been allowed up to that point.  She starts with a brief history of the SF and their training; she then details missions the Special Forces carried out from 1989 – 2003, including their work in Panama, El Salvador, Kuwait, Somalia, the Balkans, Afghanistan, and the second gulf war.  My eyes were opened to the significant role they’ve played in all these conflicts.  It was absolutely fascinating.

The second book is Chosen Soldier by Dick Couch. Couch, a former Navy SEAL and CIA case officer, is the only writer ever given the privilege to attend the many months of Special Forces pre-selection, preparation, selection, and qualification training from start to finish.  He was given “full access to all training, venues, students, and training cadres.”  Couch did not merely interview.  He and his wife moved to one of the few residential structures on base at Camp Mackall in North Carolina.  Couch went out with the SF candidates to observe first hand exactly what they did, and, in a number of instances, do it with them.

One of the things I loved about this book are the personal bios given about the backgrounds of the various candidates.  They are not at all what you’d expect—everything from bouncers to engineers to one fellow who had a degree in and a passion for Russian literature.  I also enjoyed the details he gave about the training.  There are about 1.2 million people in the US Army.  Only about 5,000 of them are in the Special Forces.  When you finish, you have a good feel for the types of things they learn and why about 80% of those who volunteer for training wash out.

I couldn’t put either of these books down.  If you decide to read them, let me also recommend you download and read Army Field Manual 3-05.20 Army Special Forces Operations as well, which is the Army’s “keystone manual for Special Forces (SF) doctrine” that “describes SF roles, missions, capabilities, organization, command and control, employment, and sustainment operations across the operational continuum.”  You can find it here: http://tinyurl.com/3ryt3o3.  For those who just want an overview of these forces, the Army has provided a great site here: http://www.goarmy.com/special-forces.html. 

The Boys of Laketown and Round Valley

Every school morning my wife and two oldest girls hunt.  They eat their breakfast perched high on a hill and watch for the quarry.  When it appears, a shout is raised, and the trio races to the car.  They blast out of the garage, perform an expert three-point turn, then Monte Carlo down the winding hill road.  Next, they attempt to set a land speed record on the straight shot into town, all in an effort to catch the big yellow school bus. 

Most days they make it.  The bus makes a few stops in town.  Sometimes they’re not so speedy and can only manage to catch the bus at its last stop.  Sometimes I join in on the hunt.  Most of the time I catch the bus at its last stop in town.  But this week I was quick enough to get them to the third stop in front of the middle school where most of the teens board the bus.  And I had the privilege to witness a class act.

The first time I arrived with my payload, all but two teen boys had already boarded.  We raced up to the bus, my daughters flew out of the car, and the two teenage boys from Round Valley stopped.  They did not get on.  They waited for my girls to hustle the length of the bus.  My girls got on, and the boys followed them in.

Odd.

The next day we got there a little bit earlier.  This time I witnessed ALL of the boys from Laketown and Round Valley stand and wait for all the girls to get on first.

What was this? 

I asked my girls about it.  They confirmed—it wasn’t a fluke.  While first initiated by the bus driver, the boys have the class to show this courtesy every day. 

Teenagers . . .

Bravo, Gentlemen.  Bravo.

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  • Good Stuff! Savory Thai, Planters Medley, Everest, The Arrival

    ByJohn Brown

    I love finding little, non-chain restaurants with excellent, reasonably priced food. And I just found another one this week. It’s called Savory Thai, and it’s on 182 W Center Street in Orem, UT.

    Oh, baby. If you decide to go, you are in for a treat. We ate there in celebration of my third daughter’s call to do missionary work in the middle and western Pennsylvania area (go Steelers, Amish, and “yous all”).

    I learned to love Thai food because it’s so close to Indonesian food. And I learned to love that because I lived in the city of Nijmegen in the Netherlands for five months and in Amersfoort, which is maybe an hour away, for seven. In Nijmegen, I lived in the attic of a row house with a series of missionary companions. In Amersfoort, I lived in a spare bedroom with another series of companions. Both homes were owned by Indonesian grandmothers who cooked one or two Indonesian meals a day for us. Think about that—home cooked Indonesian food every day. It was marvelous. When I came back to the States, Indonesian restaurants were few and far between, but to my delight I found that the Thai cuisine is very close, and so that became my stand in.

    If you’ve never had Thai food, it’s kind of like Chinese, but it’s got curries, so it’s a little like Indian as well, but that doesn’t describe it either because it has its own separate taste that’s entirely wonderful.

    This place is in a little strip of stores. It’s small enough that you could drive right past and never know it existed. But when you walk in, you’ll see that they know how to make a good first impression. It’s clean, smells good, and the host is friendly, but these guys go farther than that. You’ll notice, of all things, the menu cover. Instead of handing out some flimsy paper or laminated thing, they hand out these thick menus covered in what looks like some kind of leather. It gives a feel of permanence, of solidity, as if the restaurant has been there for years (it’s two months old). But of course we weren’t there for menus or friendly servers. We were there for the food. And we were not disappointed.

    I can happily report that their green curry (spicy), pineapple curry, massaman curry (a lovely peanuty sauce), orange chicken, chicken cashew, fried rice, and pad Thai were all excellent. They use no MSG, cook it fresh, and keep it reasonably priced, $8-$10 per dish. I can promise you that we’ll be back.

    If you’re in the area and want some great food, stop at Savory Thai.

    *

    I love almonds and have been for many years a big fan of the W?nderful brand bags of roasted and salted almonds you can find in Sam’s Club. However, this last week, I came across something new from Planters called their Almond Lover’s Medley, which is a blend of four different varieties of almonds, dry roasted and unsalted. It includes the Marcona, Nonpareil, Fritz, and Butte-padres, which is the variety used in the W?nderful bags. I can report that this mix from Planters is delicious. The differences in taste and texture between the varieties is subtle, but real. And I was surprised at how much I enjoyed them unsalted. If you love nuts, you’ll want to give this blend a try.

    *

    I did not want to watch a movie about climbing Mt. Everest. Everest? Were you kidding me? I couldn’t think of anything more boring, but this is what my daughters wanted, and it was Thanksgiving weekend, and so we watched Everest, the 2015 movie.

    I am happy to report that it ended up being a great, disaster thriller, based on a true story, which was captured in the book Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. I cared about the characters, was on pins and needles during great portions, and exclaimed out loud during a number of tense parts. And after all that sweating, the story made me think about the things we do and how to prioritize when life is on the line.

    If you like stories about survival, you’ll love this. If you don’t, I still think there’s a good shot you’ll really enjoy it.

    *

    My wife is a sport. We were in the big city to watch a movie with our youngest daughter who is in high school. Our daughter, with her teenage brain, had the wild idea of a double-feature. My original man brain thought that sounded capital—how long had it been since we’d squandered five or six hours watching movies! The wise man brain didn’t think it was a very practical idea, and suggested it would be much better to do a double-feature next week we we could start at three in the afternoon. But the wise man brain was outnumbered and soon succumbed. And then all of the crazy brains ganged up on my wife, who graciously relented, and so we watch The Arrival and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and got home at like 1:30 am.

    As for Fantastic Beasts, if you like Harry Potter stuff, you’ll love it. If you’re not mad for Harry Potter, it’s not going to rock your world (although you still might have a good time). Enough said.

    What about The Arrival?

    This is a movie about the arrival of aliens, but it’s not a shoot-em-up like Independence Day or War of the Worlds. It’s more like Contact, the one with Jodie Foster. It’s a film that makes you think and is for those who are willing to be a little patient. If you can slow down and just enjoy the film, I think you’ll end up loving it because it’s about far more than meeting mysterious creatures. It ends up being about the choices a woman makes about her family. If you go and give it the space it needs, I guarantee you’ll chat about it and savor it afterwards.

    I won’t tell you anything more because you’ll only understand what’s going on in the woman’s life when you get to the last fourth of the movie, and I don’t want to spoil the delicious revelation for you. So just know that the alien tech and the alien themselves are strange and mysterious and cool, but that this movie is about so much more.

    If you liked Contact or even Inception (sans the frustrating non-ending), you’ll love this.

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    Slush I Read by Jim C. Hines

    ByJohn Brown

    Laughs are lovely. I just came across this wonderful parody by novelist Jim C. Hines which will give you a few for free. Enjoy!

    Slush I Read
    by Jim C. Hines

    (Apologies to Seuss)

    I read slush.
    Slush I read.

    That slush I read.
    That slush I read!
    I do not like that slush I read.

    Do you like fanfic with vamps?

    I do not like them Mary Sue.
    Why do these vamps all worship you?

    Here’s a tale from D & D!

    I do not want your D & D.
    I do not like your elf PC.
    I can not stand your purple prose.
    I want to punch you in the nose!

    Would you like a hot sex scene?
    I wrote it for my online ‘zine!

    Go to Hines’ site and read the rest right now

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  • The Rocket Science of Overspending

    ByJohn Brown

    In July, I blogged some spending 101 for Congress and the President, including contigency planning for alien invasions.  I thought I made some good points.  However, through the whole spending debate that occured this last spring nobody in the media or elsewhere was able to make clear what is going on with the US government. Nobody except Dave Ramsey. He explained it on Fox and then on his website. If you take the big federal numbers and translate them to a size we can understand, here’s the situation:

    – Joe and Susie (the Federal government) make $55,000 a year
    – They spend $96,000 a year
    – At the same time, they have $366,000 in credit card debt

    Look at those numbers again. Every year those clowns in Washington are adding $41,000 a year to that massive debt total. Soon enough, our overspending will kill our ability to do anything else except pay the interest on that debt.  150 years after America abolishes slavery, we decide that debt slavery really is a good idea. Yea! Give us shackles! Give us shackles!

    No wonder our credit score as a nation (our bond rating) was reduced.

    So what did the government do this last Spring? They agreed to find some way to cut spending from $96,000 to $78,000. Meaning they’re still adding $28,000 dollars a year to the government’s massive credit card debt total. Which we have to pay!

    If the US Government was a family, they would be making $55,000 a year, they spend $96,500 a year, & are $366,000 in credit card debt. What’s the first step to get out of debt? Stop overspending! But that means a family that is used to spending $96,500 a year has to learn how to live on $55,000. That’s a tough pill to swallow. It works the same way for the government. You can’t borrow your way out of debt, whether you’re a typical American family or the entire U.S. government. At some point, you’ve got to say, “Enough is enough!” and make the hard cuts necessary to win over the long haul. – Dave Ramsey

    The answer is NOT to print more money.

    If you do that, you reduce the value of each dollar. It’s called inflation. As Ron Paul rightly points out, it acts effectively as a tax. Or as I like to put it–a PAY CUT. How many of you would like to get a nice fat 10% or 20% pay cut this year? Furthermore, instead of fixing the problem, the overspending continues, which means more pay cuts in the future. More fun!

    No, the thing we have to do is STOP SPENDING MORE THAN WE MAKE.  Here’s what has to happen.

    1. We must write into law that Congress balance its budget every year–they must not be able to spend more than they take in except in rare emergencies. This means they might need to build up a rainy-day fund.
    2. We must cut our spending. Now. I linked to an idea Ron Paul has for this in my 101 post where we just go back to 2007 levels of spending.
    3. We must work to increase our revenues. Not through hiking taxes to monstrous levels, but by providing optiomal regulatory conditions for economic growth. See my 101 post. 
    4. We need to make sure the taxes are visible, so the American people can easily see what’s going on. Congress has mandated that lenders provide clients an APR so they can clearly see the rate they will pay on a mortgage. Why shouldn’t we mandate that the IRS send out an ATR–annual tax rate (or maybe Annual Grab Rate or Annual Tax Burden or you come up with the name)–which includes all Federal taxes translated into one total rate?  
    5. We need to give everyone the opportunity to pay for the soldiers that defend them and the roads they drive on, even if it’s just $50-100 a year for the very poor.
    6. We must send people to the White House and Congress who are willing to do what it takes RIGHT NOW.

    I mentioned Ron Paul a number of times above. He’s not my choice for president. But he has added a number of good things to this discussion. Here are the Ramsey links:

    EDIT: Mark Holt makes an excellent point in the comments. Inflation isn’t just a pay cut. It’s a savings cut, a retirement cut, a 401k cut, a house value cut, an everything cut. Using that backdoor method, the DC Connivers institute a tax of everything, something they’d never be able to pass out in the open.

     

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  • Pew Study on American Reading Habits

    ByJohn Brown

    Pew Research Center just published the results of a national study surveying reader habits. It answers questions like:

    • Do folks read ebooks more often on cell phones, e-readers, or computers?
    • How many books does each age group read per year?
    • How do readers under 30 discover books to read? 

    Lots of great stuff. You can read the full survey here: http://libraries.pewinternet.org/2012/10/23/younger-americans-reading-and-library-habits/

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  • |

    JB Speculates: eBooks, Book Contracts, Agents, and Libraries

    ByJohn Brown

    I’ve looked in the crystal ball I hide under my desk and caught a glimpse of what ebooks will change in the next few years. Specifically I saw what will happen to:

    • Book Contracts
    • Literary Agents
    • eBook Aggregators and Libraries

    After showing me the vision, the ball thanked me for shopping at Walmart. Weird.

    PRINT ONLY CONTRACTS

    The only reason to have a print publisher is to get distribution you cannot obtain on your own, or to get it more cheaply than it would cost you if you tried to get it on your own. That’s it. Now, it’s true publishers have excellent art departments and story editors. But you can contract out cover art, copy editing, formatting, and even story editing yourself.

    Distribution is the main thing publishers offer that you can’t get anywhere else.

    BTW, when I’m talking about distribution, I’m talking mostly about getting the books out to places people can see and purchase them. For example, publishers can get your book into hundreds or thousands of books stores all at the same time–Barnes & Noble, Hastings, Walmart, Costco, indie book stores, airport book stores, grocery stores, drug stores, etc. Publishers can get you display in those stores so consumers see your book. One form of that are the racks and new book displays. Another is one that Scholastic does so well, i.e. displaying and selling titles in tens of thousands of classrooms with its book catalogs. A single author just can’t do that. 

    It’s also true publishers can convince some platform venues, that would never look at a self-pubbed author, to spotlight your book.  For example, it’s unlikely a self-published author will be able to convince Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal, which have huge platform for library book purchasers, to review a book.  But publishers have no problem getting their stuff in there. Likewise, it’s often much easier for publishers to get endorsements from other authors or people with platform than it is for a single author.  Of course, there are so many places that have some kind of platform, that publishers don’t have a lock on them all, e.g. Goodreads and Amazon reader reviews.  But for the sake of simplicity, let’s just look at the distribution end.  

    Because 90% of book sales are still hardcopy, the only way to have HUGE sales numbers, right now, is through a print publisher. I’m talking about the numbers you see in the Publishers Weekly top selling books, where you have to sell at least 100k copies in hard back, 500k copies in mass market, to even make the list.

    Publisher’s lock on this ability will erode. We can see signs of this in the USA Today Top 150 already. I consider this to be the most accurate picture of what truly is selling the most. Here’s why. And ebooks are starting to be the best selling format for a number of books. On that list, they add up sales of a title in all formats and then list the best-selling format. So when you see an (E) at the end of the listing, you know it’s selling more ebooks than any other format. E’s are starting to pop up all over and we’re still in the early adopter stage for ebooks and ereaders.

    So what does this mean?

    If I put on my author business slacks (why does it always have to be hats we change?), I’d be crazy to turn down a publisher that wanted to offer me monster distribution. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. You offer me $500k now, I’m taking the money and running all the way to the bank and then the $6.99 Indian all-you-can-eat buffet.

    Of course, I’m not likely to get that kind of an offer. We new writers are more likely to get an offer for, what were Hines’ numbers? $6k – $12k? And for that the publisher will want all our ebook rights and will tie them up for years and years and years. And then they’ll try to give us a fraction of what we could get selling directly. Furthermore, they don’t provide such books the same push to garner platform spotlight. They don’t spend the money to give them the prime display in bookstores. This means the difference between what they bring to the table for us smaller authors and what we can do on our own is much less. And the ebook has narrowed that even further.

    How much further? Well, how many books would you have to sell to make that advance of $6k – $12k? If you’re selling your books for $2.99 for the Kindle, you get about $2.00 a book. That means you’d have to sell 3k-6k copies of an ebook to earn as much as that average advance. 

    Do you think you can sell 3k – 6k copies of an ebook at $2.99?

    Some authors will be able to do this. Some won’t. If you wanted to do that in three years, you’d have to sell about 150-350 books per month. For a more in depth comparison between traditional publishing and self-publshing ebooks, see Dean Smith’s blog on cash flow.  

    Maybe you don’t think you can make those numbers. But maybe you can. The point is that if you think you can, then you can make as much on your own as you can with a publisher. This means there is absolutely no financial reason on earth to take the publisher’s deal. None. Now, if you have non-financial reasons, that’s another thing, but when looking at dollars and cents, it’s fairly clear the publisher’s ability to put you into their distribution channels isn’t worth what it will cost you. Especially since the ebook is forever and may keep selling for years to come AND because the market for ebooks is still in the early adopter phase–it’s only going to grow massively over these next years.

    But this doesn’t mean paper publishing is dead. It’s not. Nor will it be for some time. Just because SOME authors can make as much in the ebook market on their own as they can with a publisher through their distribution channels doesn’t mean all of them can. Furthermore, publishers with distribution have something to offer even those who successfully publish ebooks themselves.

    Let’s say you have an ebook series that starts to sell well for you, 1,000 per month. That’s $2k per month, $24k per year. If a publisher wanted to buy the rights to that from me, they would have to pay me MORE than $70k as an advance. MORE. Because I can make that on my own in three years selling it myself. In fact, since ebooks are forever, I have to look at the present value of all of those years of sales. That income stream is going to be a LOT MORE than $70k, even if we think sales will taper off after five or six years.

    How many big publishers are going to want to pay that?

    Probably none. Or, at least, I suspect those deals will be few and far between. But there is money to be made in paper, even if that market is shrinking. There will be some smaller publishers who, for the right price, will offer paper distribution. And if they can get me distribution that I couldn’t get myself for paper, or do it at a lower cost, then I’d want to sell them paper rights. Why not?

    And so what I see in the crystal ball are some authors, the ones who do well selling ebooks, being able to sign contracts with publishers that sell paper rights only. I know the big publishers probably won’t go for that in the near term, but smaller publishers will see the value and step up to the plate.

    AGENTS

    What about agents? Are they going to die?

    I think if we remember that literary agents are SALES agents, then their future becomes clear. The only reason to get a sales agent is because doing so makes my property worth more (same reason for getting a publisher, btw). If, by letting them focus on sales and letting me focus on getting more product out the door, I make more money than I would if I tried to do BOTH the selling and the producing, then I want an agent.

    I want to sell as many rights as I can to as many people as possible–gaming, film, audio, foreign, merchandise, etc. I’d be a fool to say, well, no, I’ve got this little ebook gig going. I’m not going to sell any of these many other rights to anybody. No, I’m just going to let them sit in my basket and earn me nothing. Let them go to waste.

    !?

    A good agent should be able to sell more than I could on my own because they have a better ability to reach AND close editors AND other people that are in the market for purchasing rights to my property. They’ll also allow me to sell more because all the time I would have spent selling, I can now use to create more product. So not only do I have more books, and therefore rights, to sell, I can hopefully sell them for a better price and terms than I could on my own.

    I’d be a fool not to increase my revenue. I’d be a fool not to have a good agent.

    So as long as there are people who want to purchase these non-ebook rights, and an agent can make a sale I couldn’t or can make it for less than what it would cost me to do it on my own, then agents will be useful. Because of this, because we’ll always have more than ebook rights to sell, I don’t see a role for good agents ever going away.

    EBOOK AGGREGATORS & LIBRARIES

    When more and more people begin reading ebooks what happens to the libraries?

    Ebooks cost less. So a lower price per book would simply allow libraries to purchase more books and expand the collection. But wait, they don’t need rooms and rooms to hold all the paper. You can store the world’s library in one computer room. Shoot, this means that housing the collection on a server instead of on the shelves would cost less. This would allow for an even bigger collection. But why maintain a server and manage your own collection if you can network to the collection down the road?

    In fact, what if there were a mega service with millions of titles you could subscribe to? That would be even cheaper. Then you wouldn’t have to pay book purchasing agents or IT folks to keep your server running.

    Enter the ebook aggregators–the Netflixes of ebooks (I know somebody somewhere is working on this business plan; is it you?)

    I’m betting the whole library system goes national. I’m betting you’ll have some government aggregators, but they’ll probably be dwarfed by the private companies. You’d subscribe to the aggregator’s service just as you do Netflix today and many university libraries currently subscribe to electronic periodical collections.

    The aggregators will probably charge users as Netflix does for a certain number of books checked out at the same time. If a large entity like a library wanted to subscribe, I bet the aggregator would charge access to the collection based on number of users at the library. The library would pass some of that fee onto patrons. The rest of the fee would be paid by the community’s tax dollars, just as those tax dollars pay for the current collections. You might even have device manufacturers coupling subscriptions with purchase of the product as incentives to buy their devices.

    When the aggregators step in, we suddenly end up with a different mix of distribution channels that will coexist:

    1. Author –> ebook retailer (Amazon Kindle, B&N Nook, etc.) –> reader
    2. Author –> subscription aggregator –> reader
    3. Author –> subscription aggregator –> public and school libraries –> reader
    4. Author –> publisher –> subscription aggregator –> then option 2 or 3 above
    5. Author –> publisher –> current distribution channels

    Surprised by #5? Well, the current distribution channels are not going away until every book can be read on an ereader and everyone who reads has and wants to read on such a device. That’s going to take some time, if it happens at all.

    Why would readers buy individual titles ala distribution channel 1 above? Some people just want to own. Other readers will be happy to purchase the books because they don’t want to wait for a checkout slot to open up, e.g. I already have my allotted number of books checked out and I really want this one on hand all the time because it’s Suzie’s favorite. Other readers will want to customize a book with highlights, margin notes, links, etc. just as many of us like to mark up paper texts. We’ll need our own copy for that. Still, I think the bulk of reading will move to the subscriptions. For example, right now I purchase DVDs I love, even though I can get them from Netflix. But the number of DVD’s I own are a fraction of those I watch. Most TV and film I watch once and it goes back to Netflix until I want to see it again. And this checking out becomes even easier where there’s nothing physical to send through the mail.

    Please note: there will probably be some form of gatekeeping with the aggregators. I doubt they will carry every scrap of anything ever written. They’ll carry a lot of stuff, but not every written word. Furthermore, when you have hundreds of thousands of titles, you’ll need mechanisms for helping your subscribers find great content suited to their tastes. A lot of “people who read this read that,” review services, etc.–the next generation of Netflix recommendations, Goodreads reviews, and Pandora like tools. 

    Aggregators won’t be the only gatekeepers, however. The key is in getting notice. And there will be many places with platform that will be able to shine a spotlight on a book. Think about all the places you find out about movies today—radio movie programs, TV movie reviews, Rotten Tomatoes, Newspaper Reviews, Yahoo viewer and critic review summaries, Kids-in-mind, and on and on. Look at all the ways you find music. There will be just as many ways to find books.

    As far as paying authors, I suspect aggregators will pay authors each time a book is checked out, or, if it’s a must-have name author, they will pay to list the title plus a per use payment.

    So that’s the future I saw in my strange little ball. Feel free to comment or add your own thoughts.

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