To paraphrase Rev. Wright, some of my roosters have come home to roost. And we all know that there are good roosters and bad roosters.
The good rooster is my eldest, Zack. He's home for the weekend from UCF in Orlando, Florida where he's studying to be an engineer. He flew home on the rails, thanks to Amtrak and the Student Advantage program that gives travel discounts. We're looking into flying him home next time because Spirit Air has some good discounted rates and because I dearly love Amtrak, but their train schedules aren't what you'd call convenient. I had to get up at 3 a.m Thursday night/Friday morning to pick up the returning rooster from a train station a couple of hours away. I don't mind the trip - just the hour.
HOLLA at the Fall Rally Harley bikers and weekend visitors who were travelling to Myrtle Beach in the wee early hours on Friday morning. No, the woman whose car lurched randomly at one point wasn't coming home from a really good party. She was just sleepy. The kidlets (the newly retrieved oldest and my youngest, Sam) jolted from their comfy sleep to wide-awake and terrified consciousness and insisted that Mom visit the nearest convenience store for a good dose of caffeine.
I'm not so sure about the Spirit thing though. Their air fares look reasonable ($50.00 to fly from Orlando to Myrtle Beach) is a damned good looking rate. But sometimes the good looking ones don't turn out to be so good when you look at 'em close. The eldest pointed out that the fine-print on the Spirit site talks about fees and other charges not being included in the $50.00 fare. Those fees could up the cost considerably, making what looks like a good deal, not be such a good deal after all.
The one thing I can say about Amtrak after a lot of experience financing my son's trips home is that what you see is what you get. The round trip on the rails costs about $85.00 and the fare they quote is the full fare. There are no extra costs or charges (unless, possibly, you take a heck of a lot of luggage or something, but that's not a college kid problem). If Spirit offers a fare where what looks like a bargain turns out to be an actual bargain then we might give 'em a shot next time. Flying him right into Myrtle would be nice, but in my present economic circumstances, it'll only work if its nice and cheap.
My eldest is a rooster who's welcome to return home to roost any time. The sky is brighter, the air smells sweeter and life is better when all three of my resident roosters are roosting in their home coop.
The other rooster is a dose of cosmic karma, and it's a bad, bad, evil and downright nasty kind of rooster. It slapped me in the face this morning when I was boogling around my customized Google News page. A couple of years ago Mr. Quack and I were looking for an economical and LEGAL way to download some music to burn some CDs. For me, that means mostly songs of the 70s and 80s. Has any good music been written since the 80s? I think not. (Or mostly not. Charlie Daniels has a new one out called What This World Needs Is A Few More Rednecks. I'm not too much on country, save for a few tunes and everything by Charlie Daniels).
Anyway, Mr. Quack and I were tickled to run across a site where you paid a one-time fee to join and then you could download all the music you want. Eureka! We'd struck gold. And besides, who did it hurt?
Well, like I said, this morning, I clicked my Google News tab to see what was happening in the world of ebooks. And there it was. A karmic rooster flew right home to roost. I saw a story about a new service for the iPad that allows users to pay once to join and then they could download all the ebooks they wanted. I clicked into the site, a service called myPad Media. For a fee of $49.95 users can download from "over 30,000 popular titles."
And ya know what my first thought was? But, wait! How do all those authors get paid? They worked hard to write those books. I know how hard I worked on mine. They poured their hearts and souls into that writing. A service buying a copy and then essentially giving it away to thousands of subscribers may or may not be legal -- but IT AIN'T RIGHT.
I don't know if my books are available on the service or not, but I distribute to the iPad through Smashwords. And SW founder Mark Coker thinks it's very important to distribute all ebooks without DRM. So my books could very well be right there on the site being distributed to a bunch of folks who never paid me a penny for the books I worked so hard to create. They'd be, by and large, good folks who didn't want to steal pirated books and thought they'd found a LEGAL way to get all the ebooks they wanted. And besides, who would it hurt?
Well, it would hurt me. And it would hurt all the Mariannes on the new All, Day, All Night Romance Divas blog. (It just launched - come check it out. I'll be blogging there on the 18th of every month). See, when hubby and I joined the music download service, all I thought about were the big boys. All I thought was that Billy Joel or Elton John or whoever wasn't going to be hurt a bit if I downloaded one of their songs. And a reader who joins the ebook download service will be thinking that Johanna Lindsey or Julia Quinn or Diana Palmer or whoever won't be hurt either.
And you know what? The big boy singers and the big diva authors would be hurt, at least a wee bit, but not nearly as much as all those other folks who make up the "or whoever." I'm one of those folks. I'm a "whoever" and to me, every single sale matters. I'd love to have as many readers as Johanna, Julia or Diana. Heck, I'd love to have a half or a third as many readers as any of that talented trio of authors. I'm not there yet. I'm climbing uphill and that's really hard to do when companies like the iPad collective are trying to find legal ways to block my progress.
Take it from a lawyer - making it legal doesn't make it right. I haven't examined the iPad's contracts or services on an up close and personal level. I couldn't because I can't afford an iPad right now. So I'm not making any accusations against the company. Like I said, it may turn out to be perfectly legal. But I know it's perfectly wrong.
Fans should support their favorite recording artists by buying their music and readers should support their favorite writer by buying their books. A bad economy may limit those purchases, but finding a cheaper route hurts the creators and cheapens the downloaders. Art has never been big business, but no society can exist or prosper without food for the soul and the spirit.
When you pay to buy or download a Billy Joel or an Elton John song, you're supporting art and an artist. By all the ducks in the pond, I'm surely no Elton John or Billy Joel. I'm not Julia Quinn, Johanna Lindsey or Diana Palmer. Maybe I'm only a "whoever," but I am an artist. When you download a Mary Anne Graham ebook, you pay for my art and yes, you help me climb the creative mountainside.
The service I mentioned is only one of what is or will likely be - many. There are always a lot of folks looking to game the system and get something for nothing. Any one considering joining such a service should realize that they're enriching a company who created nothing. They're also depriving the artists whose work they acquire.
I'm asking that readers not bargain away their values or their morality. Some bargains just aren't worth the price.