INFINITE JIM HAS A NEW PITCH

Jim never amounted to much in his life. He was the first to admit that. He grew up poor in an upstate New York town. He didn’t know who his father was, and his mother died when he was young. Jim turned to drugs for release from this world, and it worked, that’s what killed him. Heroin needle-inflicted AIDS was the door out. Though this transition was painfully slow. But he suspected no less an end for his short, squandered life. Jim had come to the conclusion early on that he always got what he deserved.

And he was right. In his death, he gets what he deserves.

As Jim moves across into the next world, he gets the chance to fix what was broken in his life. With the help of a Shaman named Owa’etga Sega’ hedus (Marvelous Attention Span / Marv) and in an adventure that covers the entire Earth from Iroquois forests to Mediterranean islands, from the Kansas Prairie to Alpine mountains, and finally from a ghost of New York City to a ship on an endless sea, Jim becomes the person he always should have been.

Can of Whoop Ass

Can of Whoop Ass is done, the final cut is here:

WATCH THE MOVIE

Potential Movie House

Here is a potential "monster's house" for Can of Whoop Ass! 

Letter to Hachette's CEO Michael Pietsch about Amazon which was supposed to be about Hachette

The response, and the letter:

Dear Mr. Hall,

What a pleasure to find this gem of reason and articulateness amid the nearly five thousand emails kindly launched my way by Amazon’s message to KDP users!  Thank you for writing and reminding me of the sanity and sense and higher accomplishments that the collaboration between publishers and writers can attain.

Thanks again and very best wishes,

Michael

---------

Dear Mr. Pietsch,

Amazon sent an email encouraging me to reach out to you to berate Hachette on fighting them on e-book prices. I have included that email here, though I am sure you have seen it.

Their email offended me on many fronts, and I gave it great consideration in the last few days. Finally, I decided to share my thoughts about it with you . . . 

First, as a consumer I sincerely believe you (your company, your staff, your imprints, your authors) are entitled to charge anything you want for your books. In the end, the customers / marketplace should inform what you charge, not wholesalers and internet distributors. Amazon trying to dictate pricing by saying they have the consumer's best interest at heart and asking me to reach out to you about it is an unsettling development. 

The first thing that bothered me about their email is they called George Orwell a technological throwback.

It's quite clueless on Amazon's part to include him in their email to writers. For example, I could also say Orwell was just worked up about those little Penguin paperbacks being cheap and falling apart. Or maybe he was worried about the cheap price point and making even less money. Or maybe this quote was taken completely out of context and is missing the rest of it. But really, as Orwell might have said in this situation, we could say Orwell said anything "we" want him to say. This is the very definition of Orwellian. And it really appears Amazon did just that.

History rhymes? No, history does repeat itself because absolute power corrupts absolutely. There is something quite wrong about their portrayal of the big publishing houses. Competing publishers are a great thing for consumers. Even if they have become part of giant media conglomerates, as long as we have four or five of them and some large independents fighting it out for customer share, consumers will be okay. We've seen this before in other industries (movie studios, car companies, even oil companies, er, maybe.) Get enough giants after each other for customers, the customers come out reasonably ahead for the most part. It's quite clear behind their spin that this e-book pricing debate is not about money, it's about control.  They want to wrestle control of something away from you, something that is yours. And absolute control is bad for all. It always is.

Then I realized Amazon appears to be asking me to help them take this control. 

I am one of those authors toiling away for years without any recognition. But, I also have the unique perspective of having worked at a small independent publisher, and now I work in risk analysis software. In these day jobs, I've learned two most vital things that I didn't learn just writing: the decision you make with gut instinct, informed by years of refined experience, simply cannot be algorithmed and quantified. The choices an active participant in publishing makes about what book to publish, feature where, how many in the first print run, what people get the review copies first, even what books staff love and have sincere hopes and are rooting for . . . Amazon has absolutely no interest in any of this because they don't understand it. But they understand how to analyze and dominate. And so they try that with me, calling on self published authors to send their missives to you, craftily knowing they are preaching to a choir of dejected authors who couldn't cut it at one of your imprints, or even get anything read by them. It could be that they are using this situation to create a team of writers on their side, ready for their next step. 

And where does that lead? Does Amazon actually want to crush publishers, gather a fleet of authors, generate content themselves, and distribute it all via download? Maybe the real question is . . . why wouldn't they want this? That seems to fit them just right. We should expect no less from them.

Another issue in their letter, books only compete against books, no echoing inside the box on that one. A customer may say "should I buy a book or pay my data plan?" but this should be way outside the realm of any discussion about book sales. Again they are worried about control, this time over time management, (book vs. Facebook.) And we know books are the very best source material for movies. They certainly don't compete against movies. Finally, I guess we either believe their statement about how distracted we all or, or we don't. I'm sure there is data out there proving any point.

The elastic argument about e-book pricing in Amazon's email is wrong. As a consumer, it would be fine by me if publishers charge what a trade paperback costs, minus the actual printing cost that you pay a printer, since all the other upfront costs are the same for any book. Amazon doesn't know what the upfront costs of a book are. They don't appear to have a clue about all that goes into developing a title. I'm sure they don't care. So they talk about warehouses and trucks and returns and cost of doing business in their spin, the tangibles they want to totally get rid of for book distribution, anyway.

Plus, no warehousing means that whole group of people are no longer employed to buy books. I guess they can all go to work in IT and solve all the server screw ups. But after a day of that, their minds are too fried to read. This I know.

And one more thing, royalty checks: Baaaah! I'll tell you, authors want advances. Who makes real royalty checks? 10% of authors? Promising royalties to untested authors is lotto. Again, it's manipulating them.

We all know technology disruptors are the very first to tell you "You're a stick in the mud if you resist change. Get onboard or get out of the way!" A technology disruptor that is also a company that wants to be the biggest thing in the world . . . well, we sci fi authors and fans know how that can turn out. If nobody fights them, gets them to adapt, change, agree, find a reasonable middle ground, we're hosed. We can see if this prediction bears out. Amazon's next step might be to make their print book distribution channel more restrictive, cumbersome, difficult for publishers, until they dissolve it. Meanwhile, they're working on the "long tail" of self published authors out there to rise against you by spinning Orwell.

What would George Orwell say about all this? He'd say fight total control at all costs. Especially if the element that is trying to take control is a digital oligarch. 

At least, that's what I say he would say.

Yours respectfully,

Jameson

Jameson Hall

Five Cent Apocalypse Productions and Media

PO Box 666

Ithaca, NY 14851

www.jamesonhall.com

The New Pitch Letter

This is a version of letter I'm thinking of sending out, to at least get Infinite Jim in the hands of a publisher, at least for a day:

Dear Agent,

For your consideration, I’ve created a narrative of my work drawn from what others have said about it. I thought this might be a good way to help you determine if you would like to see any of these projects for representation. This approach could be quite wrong, also. But whatever your decision, I do hope you find this short journey insightful and amusing:

NOVELS

Reviews from readers 

“I finished Infinite Jim last night. There were so many beautiful and profound things in there. So many things I've sometimes thought about or wondered about or hoped. Thank you for letting me read it. I sat and thought about it for a long time after I finished it (and while I was reading it over the last 4 days I would stop and think about some passages every once in awhile - I think that means it's pretty damn good. You know, when readers keep thinking about your story, you're getting to them) . . . What I liked best about the whole thing was how you explored the questions we all have about what our lives really add up to - and how hard it us to accept that our lives didn't add up to all we expected them to - at least in this world. But in Jim's experience there's a whole universe of other possibility. That's what really grabbed me about the story: In the midst of despair and the waste of life there's all this wonderful hope. I really loved that. It was really uplifting, Jameson.” Jackie, book editor 

“Say I finished Infinite Jim, its great! awesome! I can hardly wait to die now! Seriously, it’s a really good book I hope it gets published soon. We will have to talk about it sometime. Thanks for lending it to me.” Matt, sci fi/ fantasy fan, furniture store owner

“Dude, I started reading Infinite Jim yesterday - just to get a look-see - and really had to force myself to stop cause I had stuff to do. I've never read that way on my computer, but I was hooked immediately and could have sat there at my desk for however long it took . .  if I had had the opportunity.” Panda, graphic designer

“I sure like On the Fade, I don’t even like sci fi, but this is really good. But sometimes you are saying something and I don’t know if you are just pulling stuff out of our ass, or if it is real. Anti-matter the size of an apple pie? Transdimensional? I really like the writing. And the characters. I wonder what is going to happen to them next after the story ends.” Chris, trusted reader, emergency room social worker

SCREENPLAYS

Select exchanges from film producers and contest judges 

“Wildly inventive script!” Producer James Mercurio, judge at Screenwriters Expo Contest, about Billy Arcane and the Wakinyan.

“Top 10%!”  Note from Greg Beal, Nicholl Fellowship Program Director about an early version of the script that became Edge World.

“So, I read your script (Cayuga Deep,) I think it’s great. Who is in it?” 

“What do you mean, H----?” 

“Who you have to star in it?”

“I don’t have any stars besides J.G. Hertzler.”

“No no no . . . real stars, you got to have stars in the film, that’s 98 percent of it.”

“98 percent of the film is the stars?”

“Yeah yeah, we’re talking why somebody wants to see it.”

“Because of the story?”

“No no, the stars.”

“So, uh, stars have to like the story?”

“Now you got it, Jameson.” H----- -------, producer, LA

“You talking about the script you sent about the Indians and the demon?” 

“Yes . . .”

“Well I’ll tell you something . . . what’s that noise? Where you calling from?”

“Ithaca, NY . . . I’m outside in the yard.”

“Ithaca, wow. Another writer from some shithole. I keep getting writers sending scripts from east bumfuck.”

“Actually, Ithaca is a nice place . . .”

“Ahh, sure it is. Your script is a pass, guy, it’s really too weird for me. But maybe that’s just me.” E---- -------, producer, Burbank

SHORT STORIES

Select feedback

“I just don’t find this situation plausible.”

Editor at American Zoetrope, about a story that was true to life.

ANALYTICS

Traffic on the website, www.jamesonhall.com / www.fivecentapocalypse.com

13,712 views since 2012

JAMESON HALL

In summary, after years of writing, I have a number of novels to self publish, but I don’t feel that’s the right thing for me to do. When I heard self publishing referred to as a shit volcano, I stopped considering it. I worked at a small, independent publisher for a number of years, and appreciate how true that statement is. There is a lot of work that goes into getting a book out there, in front of people, much more than “just get it out in front of people.” 

And finally, with that said, of the novels featured above, NONE have been under consideration by publishers who publish the types of novels they are.  But they should be.

Of the screenplays, one was optioned for one dollar out in LA. I never received the dollar. NONE have been under consideration by people who make the types of movies and TV shows the scripts are for. But they should be.

My only genuine rejection I’ve received was for my novel The Dark Machine, which was rejected by the fine editor Anne Groell three times at two different houses. And she was right, it really wasn’t there yet. I didn’t know how to write back when she read the novel. 

But now I do.

Thank you for your time and consideration. If you would like to see anything featured here, please let me know. 

Jameson

If you can't go through, go around!

Believe what you choose to believe!