the LA daily: why i love the los angeles kings

Sunday morning, Nolan and I watched the Penguins play the Capitals in the NHL's game of the week on NBC. It was considerably more exciting than the previous week's contest between alleged rivals the New York Rangers and Philadelphia Flyers, where someone forgot to tell the Rangers to show up and care about the game.

Watching the game together was the highlight of my weekend, and it inspired this week's LA Daily, He shoots, he scores: why I love the Los Angeles Kings:

I introduced my son Nolan to hockey during the playoffs two seasons ago, when he was 15. The Versus network had just picked up NHL games in HD, and we watched almost every game together (SECOND PRO TIP: If you're going to introduce anyone to a new sport, do it during that sport's playoffs. If it's the NHL, you get the bonus of showing them nearly all of the teams.) Last month, thanks to a post-holiday ticket sale, I took him to three games, where we watched the Kings play some of the most listless, uninspired, terrible hockey I've seen in over 20 years, but it didn't matter, because we went together. Saturday night, Nolan decided to list the various ways I've influenced his life, and one of the things at the top of the list was introducing him to hockey, which he loves. I choked back tears when he said that, because watching games together not only keeps the bond to my youth alive, but it strengthens the bond between us.

This column isn't really about hockey, but since I'm talking about it already, here's something I've been thinking about for much of this season and all of last season: The NHL has made a big deal about cutting down on fighting, and it seems like the league is working very hard to eliminate it from the game. I think this is incredibly stupid, and makes as much sense as taking the infield fly rule out of baseball; it doesn't happen that often, and casual fans may not understand what's going on, but it's a fundamental part of the game.

Whenever I suffer through yet another a Kings game where they're just getting their asses handed to them while they continue to dump and chase, over pass, and take stupid offensive zone penalties, I long for Marty McSorley, Ken Baumgartner, or Tiger Williams to come off the bench, play some old time hockey, and get the team (and fans) fired up. If the NHL wants get serious about protecting players, they should start seriously cracking down on cheap hits from behind, and stick fouls.

This was on my mind through most of Sunday's game, because the Capitals just kept taking cheap shots at Crosby, and none of this teammates or the officials did anything about it. I know Crosby has a reputation for being a whiner (though he's repeatedly compared to Gretzky, he reminds me more of Lindros) and it's pretty clear the kid doesn't have a lot of friends in the dressing room, but he's the frakking team captain, and nobody stepped up to protect him? If the NHL isn't going to call cheap shots and cross checks, and the team isn't going to send a goon out there to put on the foil, can anyone blame the Capitals for chipping away at him the whole game? I'm not taking anything away from the Caps; they played a better all around game (and Ovechkin is an unreal beast out there, who is only going to get better) but when a player like Crosby isn't allowed to shoot, it hurts his team and it rips off the fans.

Okay, so now that this has turned into a post all about hockey, a couple random thoughts about the Kings:

They've got a slim shot at the playoffs, yes, but the worst thing this team could do is make a shortsighted trade that's supposed to get them there, because we all know this team, this year, isn't going past the first round (and may even get swept.) But if the Kings' management stays patient, and they don't get fucked by free agency (the absolute scourage of sports fans everywhere) all the years of suffering are about to pay off.

I wish this team would just shoot the damn puck more, and stop it with the dump-and-chase. There are some teams who can get away with the dump-and-chase, and this team isn't one of them.

I wish they'd finish their checks in the corners, and not give up the blue line so easily.

I also wish they'd gather up all the new alternate jerseys and set them all on fire, and not just because the Kings can't seem to win while they're wearing them. Memo to sports franchises in Los Angeles: Be glad that you're not the goddamn Raiders; wear your colorful uniforms with pride.

As long as I'm complaining about uniforms: I really wish the home teams would stop wearing their away jerseys.

As long as I'm complaining about things changing: I really wish they'd change the conference and division names back.

Did I mention how much I hate the dump-and-chase?

Also: get off my lawn.

Finally: Go Kings!

in which an electronic version of sunken treasure goes on sale

Note: I'm not going to bury the lede: If you have $5 and want a non-DRM PDF copy of Sunken Treasure, you can buy it here and have it in just a few minutes.

Now, here's the story behind my decision to offer this format…

I took some time on Saturday afternoon to answer a bunch of e-mail, including a brief interview about my experience with Lulu and the release of Sunken Treasure (short version: it's been awesome. Longer version coming later this week.)

While I did this, I had Twitteriffic open, and was doing my silly Twitter thing, which, as many of you know, was the style at the time.

At 1:38pm, I sent the following message to Twitter: "Hey Twitterverse: how would you feel about a digital version of Sunken Treasure for about $5?"

I expected that a dozen or so people would be interested, but I hoped for more. Within ten minutes, over 100 different people said they were not only interested, but wanted it RIGHT NOW PLZ KTHX.

"Wow," I thought. "That was a more positive and emphatic response than I was expecting!"

I told Twitter: "Wow, so it
appears that quite a lot of you want PDF versions of this book for $5.
I didn't think it would be so many, honestly. Hmmm…"

Responses continued to pour in. I started making hash marks on a note pad.

A lot of people were asking about Kindle versions, Sony eReader versions, and other versions. I made a lot more hash marks on my note pad, and noticed that the page was almost filled.

I looked around the Lulu publishing options and told Twitter: "Many questions
about other formats for digital versions of my books. Short answer: all
I can do at the moment on my own is PDF. Still want?"

Short answer: Yes. A whole lot of people wanted it, even if it was in a PDF format.

I've always wanted to do digital versions of my books, but I've never
had a way to do it that doesn't involve me manually accepting payments
and sending out links or something equally complicated. My POD experience with Lulu has completely changed that. I logged into my Lulu account, clicked a couple of buttons, filled in one box with $5.00, and I was done.

I took a deep breath and told Twitter: "Okay, Twitterverse! You asked for it, so here it is. Sunken Treasure in DRM-free PDF for $5: http://tinyurl.com/sunkenpdf"

I admit that I had a brief flash of doubt. "Did I just screw myself? Did I just sell one and end up giving away a hundred?"

"No," I reminded myself. "People who will steal from me were never going to support my work, anyway. You're doing the right thing. You're making it available to people at a really fair price, in a super portable format. And maybe people will like it and want a paper copy for themselves or to give as gifts."

I hoped that PDF sales would be solid … well, they were solid, for about ten minutes, and then they exploded. In less than an hour, the total PDFs sold exceed 1/5 of the total print copies sold. People were e-mailing positive feedback, people were Twittering positive feedback, and people were starting to talk about it on their blogs.

"Okay, this is awesome," I thought. "I definitely did the right thing."

Over the next 24 hours, I checked sales every hour or so (hey, can you blame me?) and I watched total PDF sales close the gap with print sales, but something really awesome was also happening: the print sales, which had slowed to about 2 a day a month after release, suddenly picked up! It wasn't a ton, and I'm still not getting rich off of this effort, but it was still pretty remarkable. Feedback from buyers suggested that a lot of people read the PDF, liked it, and wanted a physical copy of their own as a result. Any doubts I had about the demand for this format, or the wisdom of trusting my instincts and releasing a DRM-free PDF at a reasonable price point vanished. I started thinking about other work of mine, and how cool it would be to offer digital versions in a similar manner.

I noticed that, coincidentally, Just A Geek had become available on O'Reilly's Safari Bookshelf. I also noticed that Just A Geek and Dancing Barefoot's sales rankings on Amazon had climbed by several thousand points in just a day. Also a coincidence? I'm not sure, but I'd like to believe it wasn't.

I just checked, and as of 10:00 this morning, not quite 48 hours after I announced it, PDF sales of Sunken Treasure have nearly caught 4 weeks of print sales (PDF is 17 sales short of overtaking print sales, so if you get it now, you could be part of, um, history!) Print sales in the last 48 hours have been better than print sales in the last 5 days. I'm not getting rich off of this, but it's certainly answered any questions I had about publishing this way.

The best part of all of this (well, other than the surprisingly enthusiastic response) is how easy it was for me to do it. Because I already had the PDF uploaded for printing, making the PDF itself available was simply a matter of making a choice and investing about 40 seconds of effort to throw the switch.

Let me close by answering a few FAQs (which I'm going to update throughout the day, so check back if I don't answer you in comments):

Q: I have all your other stuff already because I'm awesome like that. Is there enough new stuff in this to justify the purchase?

A: Dude, thank you for supporting my work! That is totally awesome, and so are you. Now, someone who is not me is probably more qualified to answer this, but here's what I think: there are some small excerpts from Just a Geek and Dancing Barefoot, but that only makes up a tiny portion of the book. It's mostly outtakes from Happiest Days (that may or may not make it into the Subterranean Press edition), various things that I've written in my blog, and an unreleased sketch that I wrote for a show at ACME. I also reformatted and rewrote my Criminal Minds production diary.

If I paid five bucks for this, and I'd already read Just a Geek and Dancing Barefoot, I don't think I'd be unhappy about it, but I'm not as objective as I'd like to be. Hopefully, someone will address this in comments, and I can link to it.

Q: I see there's a World and a US edition. What's the difference?
A: The World edition is a slightly larger format, due to legacy printing issues. There is no difference in content.

Q: So why did you make two different digital editions available?
A: So people who use direct links instead of visiting the storefront would see that there's a $5 PDF available.

Q: Oh, that's nice of you.
A: That wasn't a question, but thanks.

Q: Can I even read it on my iPhone?
A: Yeah, it's a regular old PDF file, so it will totally work on your iPhone.

Q:How will it look on my iPhone, though?
A: I don't own an iPhone, so I can't say from firsthand experience, but I've heard from a lot of people who have read it on their iPhones, and they were very happy with the experience.

Q: What about other formats?
A: I'm looking into it. I know lots of people want it for [DEVICE THEY OWN] and I'm working on making those formats available. I can't tell for sure if Lulu makes it possible for me to sell a digital version in a non-PDF format, though, so that may be a non-starter.

Q: Why not just sell it through Amazon for the Kindle?
A: I may eventually do that, but right now I don't know if I can sell enough copies to make up for the massive cut of revenue I'd have to give Amazon. I'm happy as hell to be selling in the hundreds, but if I went that way, I'd have to either increase the price significantly, or hope to sell in the thousands. I'm not sure that there are thousands of people who a) want to read this and b) also own Kindles.

Q: If I buy this, can I convert it to a different format?
A: Sure. You can use calibre to convert it to a ton of different formats. Calibre is free (speech and beer) by the way. Incidentally, if you're one of the Kindle owners, you can use calibre to convert the PDF to a Kindle format. I've seen screenshots from some people who have done that, and it looks cool.

Q: I already bought the print version. Can I get a copy of the digital version?
A: Sure you can. It's just five bucks.

Q: I see what you did there.
A: Again, not a question, but thanks.

Q: Can I give this to my friend/husband/wife/mom/girl or boy I'm trying to impress?
A: Once you have it, I can't stop you from doing whatever you want with it, and I certainly wouldn't expect you to treat it any differently than you would a paper book. However, I hope that we all understand the difference between sharing with our friends/spouses/famies and "sharing" with an entire forum, or hundreds of people simultaneously. I'm not trying to be a dick about this, and I'd rather people read it than not, but it's only $5, you know?

Q: If I buy this, can I make my own print copy?
A: As long as you don't sell it, absolutely. If a print shop doesn't want to print it for you, show them this: I give you permission to make a print copy of this book for personal, non-commercial use.

Q: If I make my own print copy and bring it to a con, will you sign it for me?
A: Hells yes I will. That'd be pretty cool, actually.

Q: So, this is awesome and I want it now, but I'm not interested in scrolling back to the top of this entry. How do I get it again?
A: I'm so glad you asked. If you have $5 and want a non-DRM PDF copy of Sunken Treasure, you can buy it here and have it in just a few minutes.

well, at least i got a good story out of it…

My table in the vendor's room at the Phoenix Comicon was right next to Aaron Douglas. Aaron is a good friend, and he knows that I'm a huge fan of his show and admirer of his work. He also knows that I'm way behind on BSG (near the end of season 3) so he's made this heroic effort to protect me from spoilers.

On the second day of the con, Gil Gerard walked over to Aaron and, with a huge smile on his face, very excitedly said, "Hey, Aaron! [GIANT FUCKING BSG SPOILER] man! Cool!"

I clamped my hands over my ears as fast as I could, but it was too late. When Gil walked away Aaron looked over at me with tremendous compassion behind his massive beard and said, "Sorry about that."

"It's my own fault," I said, "and it's actually pretty incredible that I've known you this long and been at cons with you without that happening."

I let a solitary tear fall from my eye and splash onto my table. "I'll be okay."

I guess if you're going to be spoiled, you should at least get a cool story out of it, and I bet there aren't a lot of people who can say, "Oh yeah, Gil Gerard totally spoiled Battlestar for me."

Goddamn my life is weird sometimes.

Zoë Keating is phenomenal. NPR should give her credit when they use her music.

I first heard Zoë Keating about a month ago. I wish I could remember the steps that lead to me discovering her music, but all I can remember is how floored I was when I listened to it, and how I couldn't buy her albums fast enough.

Zoë plays the Cello, which is cool on its own, but she does something with it that will just blow your mind.

Here, watch and listen a little bit, and then I'll tell you more:

See that MacBook next to her? She uses that to sample herself several times to build a rhythm, and then she plays over it, like a one-woman string quartet. Or quintet. Or awesometet. I didn't realize this the first time I heard her; I just thought her music was haunting and beautiful, but once I knew what she was doing, I was awestruck. In fact, knowing how she does it, I defy you to listen to it again and keep your jaw off the floor.

I mentioned it on Twitter shortly after I discovered her music, and it turns out that she is friends with my friend Meredith, who is one of the awesome ladies behind Coilhouse. Mer wrote a post for Coilhouse this morning about Zoë that made me an extremely sad panda:

NPR’s show All Things Considered used a song of hers yesterday without permission or credit.
Zoë’s been featured on NPR before –a great opportunity for her– but in
my opinion, that’s no excuse for their programmers to assume she’d be
fine with them arbitrarily yoinking her work and using it anonymously.
NPR is supposed to support off-the-beaten-path artists, not exploit
‘em, right?

Zoë, understandably, feels conflicted about the situation:

People have written saying I
should be flattered. Yeah, I’m flattered, but I have mixed feelings. I
feel the same as [I did] when a Channel 4 doc used my music
without permission, money or credit. I’m flattered… but also bummed
that 1) my music isn’t worth anything and 2) no one thought to ask if I
cared about how they edited it, or in what context it’s used.

Also, the economics of it are kind of a bummer… I’m an obscure experimental musician. Just a link on the All Things Considered music page, along with all the other links to music used in yesterday’s show, would help. RadioLab
is a good example of this. They use my music with my permission and
they credit me. I am happy for them to do this because I love and
support what they do, and I benefit from increased exposure and
substantial iTunes sales (thank you RadioLab!). That is a fair
exchange… (although sometimes I think I should pay a cut to RadioLab because they have helped me so much).

Sometimes this business is such
uphill going that I have to remind myself why I spend all my time doing
it (er, why? something about the need to create, blah blah). Maybe it
would be easier to go back to being an Information Architect and just [doing] a little music in the evenings for my own benefit. Ha! Not likely.

It's always been a challenge for artists to make a living doing what we love. I know firsthand how hard it is to do this sort of thing independently, and more frequently than I'd like, I wonder if it's all worth it or if it's even going to work. Exposure on NPR is the sort of thing that we all dream about, but when a producer uses her art and doesn't give something as simple as attribution in return, it hurts, and it's wrong.

I really, truly hope that this was just a simple mistake. I really, truly hope that NPR will do the right thing and use this as an opportunity to invite Zoë to be on All Things Considered, talk about her music, credit her music, and let their audience know about the phenomenally talented woman behind the music they used without attribution this week.

If you read my site with any regularity, I hope you understand how valuable your voice is for letting people know about our work. In this case, I hope that just one percent of the tens of thousands of you who read this will be inspired to post about it on your own blogs, and tell your friends about Zoë's music.

If you decide to comment at NPR's website, do us all a favor and be polite. This isn't about attacking them. This is about encouraging them to correct what is hopefully just an oversight, and if you're a dick, you won't help that cause at all.

And, borrowing from Mer one last time: "You can buy Zoë Keating’s gorgeous music on iTunes, eMusic, Amazon, or directly through her site. Support this woman. She deserves all the credit in the world."

This post has been edited since it was first written. I'd speculated about licensing fees, and that's really not the issue. It was confusing, we talked out it in the comments, and I thought it was best to revise my original post.

Edited to add:

Zoe herself commented on this entry. For those of you who read via RSS and don't come comment:

Dear Will, thank you for posting about me and my music! Its very much appreciated.

I thought I'd chime in since I'm the one being discussed. It is the credit issue that bothers me (although their edits to fit the dialog left a little to be desired). It would probably be only 1 person in a 1000 who would try to find my music after hearing those snippets on NPR. But my entire career is made from those beautiful little threads of connection. I can trace nearly every concert and musical opportunity to someone, somewhere hearing my music and maybe clicking a link. By taking away credit, those beautiful connections cannot be made.

However, all musical interludes in ATC are credited, so I'm assuming that my case is an oversight, perhaps the creator of the piece didn't label the music, etc.

Regarding ASCAP: yes I have every single work registered with ASCAP but there is a lot of confusion out there as to how ASCAP functions. Its not a one-to-one relationship between airplay and royalties paid. ASCAP samples, I think, 10% of what is being played on the radio, and then distributes money to artists based a magical formula that I don't understand. I do receive checks from ASCAP on a regular basis, but never, ever have any of them been from plays in the US. All of them have been European PRS royalties from concerts, or for broadcast of the documentary Frozen Angels in Denmark & Sweden. The workings (or non-workings) of US performing rights societies is a rich topic.

Regardless, if a musical work is not "logged" as being played in a production, even if the payment system were more direct and (I think) fair, there is no way for money to trickle down to an artist, because there is no record of it. So hopefully NPR documented my musical contribution somewhere, and then it will eventually go into the black hole of ASCAP and they can give my $6, or whatever it is, to U2, again.

re: the Channel 4 documentary, my cousin saw it on UK telly and emailed to congratulate me. I then wrote to the producers and they very promptly sent me a check without me even asking for one! Case closed on that one I think, although I realize now that I never got a copy of a cue sheet, and don't know if they filed one. The life of an artist involves a lot of paperwork…

Anyway, I'm not outraged, but more disappointed and very tired. No one likes a whiny musician and I'll get over it. Ironically, everyone talking about this is probably more exposure than if I'd gotten credit. So now I'm really confused!

I'm going to forget about all of it onstage in Australia. Off to catch a plane…

gratefully,

Zoe

One final update: A few people from NPR left comments here or on Twitter, and it appears that this was, in fact, a mistake. Reader JV sent me an e-mail just a moment ago with a link to NPR's website, where they've credited Zoe for her music. I've always thought NPR were the good guys, and I'm glad that people there made an effort to make things right.