Ursula K. Le Guin: “I keep Asking You Not to Buy Books from Amazon”

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by aardbewoner

PS. kindle for WC you can not download it ignore your request on there site if you run linux

I would assume if you were using linux you'd use the winetricks verb!
What do you think winetricks is for, anyway???

Keep in mind that that actually makes it easier for us than those poor Windows schmoes because they don't see the download link any more than we do -- Amazon is pushing the metro app -- but we have a package manager that finds it for us!

Whatever, here is your highly elusive download : http://amazon.com/kindlepcdownload/

[avantman42]

Originally Posted by aardbewoner

I do wonder if that Cloud Reader can read things i buy from amazon.(what i will not !)
Would be funny if you can read in a browser without additional stuff.

Amazon's Cloud Reader will indeed read things that you buy from Amazon, in a browser, without any additional stuff. That's exactly what it's for.

If you want more detail, the help pages are here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/custo...deId=200701430

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by doubleshuffle

Isn't Le Guin a SciFi and Fantasy writer, a peddler of genre fiction? And she feels qualified to speak about literature? O tempora, o mores...

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Wel... Mrs. Le Guin wrote some nice fantasy works, that's for sure; but if 'the critics' even refuse to see Lord of the Rings as a classic (because it's fantasy, and fantasy can never be literature, blablabla....), then what would those same critics think of her books? They're nice, certainly, but they don't hold a candle against LotR and its world.

You have it all backwards. They (LotR and Earthsea) are literature, therefore they cannot possibly be Fantasy/SciFi.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

Why? Because she's against a big corporation known for poor working conditions,

Even if that were true...

harming small businesses, and outsourcing its labor to body shops?

...or a bad thing...


What relevance does that have to Ms. Le Guin's complaint?
Why do certain people always accuse Amazon of being particularly unjust toward their employees, as if that somehow vindicates someone else (here, Ms. Le Guin) for being a pathetic liar?

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Even if that were true...



...or a bad thing...


What relevance does that have to Ms. Le Guin's complaint?
Why do certain people always accuse Amazon of being particularly unjust toward their employees, as if that somehow vindicates someone else (here, Ms. Le Guin) for being a pathetic liar?

Because the truth has nothing to do with being right?

[leebase]

Originally Posted by crich70

There was a time not so many decades back when her work would've been considered to be junk food. SF/F was kid stuff that serious readers disdained.

That changed?

[fjtorres]

She baaaack!

http://www.portlandmonthlymag.com/ar...sula-k-le-guin

This freedom was on full, spectacular display last November at the annual National Book Awards ceremony, where Le Guin was to receive the organization’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. The award was a lifetime-achievement honor (with a heavy whiff of apology from the literary establishment, which disregarded her groundbreaking work for many years because it was shelved in the science fiction section), which, to most, would call for a placidly magnanimous acceptance speech. Le Guin, by contrast, stepped up to the podium in her shiny paisley blazer, pulled the microphone down to accommodate her stature, and coolly proceeded to torch her own publishers, the “profiteer” Amazon, and the overcommercialized state of literature in general.

“We need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art,” she said. “Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximize corporate profit ... is not quite the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship.”

Well, she didn't rant against commercialization when ACE cheapie paperbacks were helping her pay her bills, did she?

She only minds when others do it.

Oh, well.

[jgaiser]

She was/is a great author. I think that her opinions are something I can easily ignore.

[Tarana]

Let's face it. She's trying to get her 3 minutes of fame so that people will again buy her books so she can makes some retirement money.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Tarana

Let's face it. She's trying to get her 3 minutes of fame so that people will again buy her books so she can makes some retirement money.

Let's face it. Some people when confronted with a trivially true statement cannot handle it and blame it on the only thing they understand as a good value, i.e. making money.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Tarana

Let's face it. She's trying to get her 3 minutes of fame so that people will again buy her books so she can makes some retirement money.

More likely she's just forgetting there is more to publishing than litfic and that non-litfic writers like getting paid as much as anybody else. And because non-litfic is popular they do get paid. A lot of them. Often a lot.

The only opinion that truly matters these days is that of the readers voting their wallets.

[conan50]

How do I get in on this and who are all these get-rich-quick bestselling authors

If you want to sell cheap and fast, as Amazon does, you have to sell big. Books written to be best sellers can be written fast, sold cheap, dumped fast: the perfect commodity for growth capitalism.

http://bookviewcafe.com/blog/2015/06/01/up-the-amazon/

[conan50]

The fantasy that traditional publishers found these great new authors to present to us died long ago. Actually the place to discover great new authors is Amazon and other self-publishing outlets. Those same 'great' traditional publishers turned down "Harry Potter" numerous times and had closed the door to many new authors.
She is trying to make Amazon into the boogeyman, but the problem was/is a dying and diminishing traditional publishing system being crushed by its own inadequacy and short-sighted gains. And she tries to defend the very thing that caused many of the problems she blames Amazon for.
There are good reasons to bash on Amazon, but she doesn't address them. Such as the book/ebook monopolistic power Amazon is quickly becoming, but not for the reasons she mentions. She should rather blame the failing of the traditional publishers and their greed for what Amazon has become. In the end you are writing for the reader, and the readers are the best judges of what rises to the top. If Amazon takes a shotgun approach to publishing, I prefer that to the stranglehold of traditional publishing.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by conan50

The fantasy that traditional publishers found these great new authors to present to us died long ago. Actually the place to discover great new authors is Amazon and other self-publishing outlets. Those same 'great' traditional publishers turned down "Harry Potter" numerous times and had closed the door to many new authors.
She is trying to make Amazon into the boogeyman, but the problem was/is a dying and diminishing traditional publishing system being crushed by its own inadequacy and short-sighted gains. And she tries to defend the very thing that caused many of the problems she blames Amazon for.
There are good reasons to bash on Amazon, but she doesn't address them. Such as the book/ebook monopolistic power Amazon is quickly becoming, but not for the reasons she mentions. She should rather blame the failing of the traditional publishers and their greed for what Amazon has become. In the end you are writing for the reader, and the readers are the best judges of what rises to the top. If Amazon takes a shotgun approach to publishing, I prefer that to the stranglehold of traditional publishing.

If you look carefully at her screeds you'll quickly notice the non-sequitur that she keeps bringing up and gives away what really offends her: capitalism.
The very idea that "literature" must please readers to survive is what offends her sensibilities.

It's a hundred year old debate (entire books have been written documenting it) and one the elites keep bringing up like clockwork. And one they keep losing.

The most amusing thing here is she wouldn't even have a paying career if it weren't for the bugaboo of the 50's: paperback originals. ACE paperbacks in particilar, the ebooks of the 50's and 60's.

[conan50]

fjtorres, very true. People like her bemoaned the mass publication of paperback books in exactly the same way.