Is FreeBSD simple enough for Novices, Will FreeBSD accept Office 98 + Publisher?

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Dag-Erling
> Smørgrav
> Sent: Wednesday, May 02, 2007 9:36 AM
> To: Ted Mittelstaedt
> Cc: freebsd-questions
> Subject: Re: Is FreeBSD simple enough for Novices,Will FreeBSD accept
> Office 98 + Publisher?
>
>
> "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm at toybox.placo.com> writes:
> > The publishers got the scent of blood with the Harry Potter books, in
> > some ways those books ruined the book publishing industry.
> Before, nobody
> > thought a mere book could garner that kind of money.  Today,
> they all think
> > this and so are all looking for the next Harry Potter series.
> As a result
> > the publishing companies are buying manuscripts that they think
> are going to
> > be big sellers based on what their marketing people think is
> selling, and
> > not caring if the work is crap or not.  Good work that would
> likely have a
> > niche market is being turned down, crappy work that they think is widely
> > appealing is being published.
>
> This has nothing to do with Harry Potter, it started long before that.
>
> > I suspect that eventually when another decade has gone by and we don't
> > see another Harry Potter series rearing it's head out of the unknown
> > muck, the publishing houses will get back to the work of just looking
> > for good works for large and small markets, developing up and coming
> > authors, and all the stuff they used to do B.H.P.
>
> I doubt it.  You know why?  Because the publishers are at the mercy of
> retailers, and retailers - especially supermarkets and large chains -
> aren't in the business of selling books, they are in the business of
> selling *a* book.  You know which book I mean: the one that's piled
> waist high on a pallet right inside the door.
>
> Everything else in the store is a loss.  A book doesn't have to stay
> on the shelf very long for the hypothetical profit to be eaten up by
> the cost of storing it and of tying up your cash in inventory.  They
> might as well glue the books to the shelves, and save the cost of
> processing a hypothetical sale and restocking.
>
> The pallet is *it*.
>
> Customers don't seem to mind - when you're looking for something to
> read on the train or give away as a present or you just want to be
> able to follow the conversation around the water cooler at work, you
> rarely go further than the pallet.  The odds are, that's the book your
> colleagues are discussing anyway.
>

Sigh.  All very true.  And the worst part of it is,
I kid you not, SEVEN FRAGGING YEARS after AW has shipped books to some of
these retailers I am STILL getting chargebacks on my royalties for returned
books.  Oh, the quantity isn't high - it's down to about maybe 5-10 books
a quarter now - but those retailers appear to have no problem with letting
a book sit for 5 years, then returning it
for credit back to the publisher.  I have no clue why AW gives them credit.
Probably, they are afraid of never getting an order from the retailer again.

Luckily I had the foresight to not sign an advance contract, so they have
no legal claim to get the money out of me - but if I ever publish with
them again, I'm sure that negative balance will come out of the woodwork.

> This is the same phenomenon that, in the game industry, killed the
> combat flight simulator and almost killed the adventure game.  It's
> not that people don't buy them, it's that retailers don't want to sell
> them because they don't sell in large volumes immediately upon their
> release.
>

Yes, and that is why I buy less and less specific stuff from retailers.
I only buy commodity items nowadays from retailers.

Case in point.  When I put together my latest server from leftovers,
3 fans were bad, one was on the CPU heatsink and the other two were in
an odd area of the case.  There was no way in hell that I could buy
replacements locally.  And these were not strange sized fans.  The best
I could do is a local electronics distributor could order them for me.
At about $10-$15 per fan.  And I'm in the middle of a city, not in
podunkville.  I ended up waiting a few days and buying them online -
grand total for all 3 was under $15, and they were good quality ball
bearing, not sleeve bearing junk.

Time was that the retailers understood that at any given time, 1/3 to
1/2 of their inventory wouldn't make money because it would just move
too slow.  However, the existence of said inventory would draw the
customers into the store and keep them coming back.  And when they
were in the store they would be buying the profitable stuff because
it was convenient, because they were standing right there.

Then the MBAs moved in and told the retailers to dump everything that
didn't move fast.  So the retailers trimmed inventory, and reduced the
number of sku's on the shelf.  Now the retailers are wondering why all
the customers are leaving them and buying at the big box stores.  It's
because when the strip mall retailer has the same inventory that the
big box retailer has, you might as well save money at the big box.

I've seen this happen to Radio Shack, to many different hardware stores,
it's what killed Egghead Software, and is killing CompUSA.  I stopped
going into those places when they stopped stocking the slow-moving
stuff that you only occassionally need, but when you need it, you must
have it.

Ted