Partial Solar Eclipse of Oct 23, 2014 (iPad photo)

Here is a picture of the partial solar eclipse, taken with my iPad, through a pair of cheap solar eclipse glasses, that were being handed out at the University of Alberta observatory.  These are actually reflections in a nearby window - the CCDs became saturated too fast to get a shot of the cresent sun if you pointed the iPad lens at it directly, and turned into your standard solar blob picture.  But through the reduced light of the reflection, you could get the crescent shape, though the picture thereby got a double image (due to reflections from both sides of the window panes, slightly offset because of the thickness of the glass).  The first picture is just an enlargement of the second, using GIMP software.

This was sometime after the maximum coverage, which got to about 75% in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.  Walking around, the light did strike one as unusual.  I thought to myself that this would be like the light levels on Mars on a sunny autumn day, about one quarter of the light levels that we get on Earth.

Nathan's Adventure in the Other-Other Land, POD proof copy

We should have a proof copy next week to examine, of the print on demand version.  There are 15 (short) text chapters and 11 pictures.  We may or may not wait on another picture or two.  It depends on the artist's schedule.  But the pictures so far are great and the text is wonderful.

Once we have the print version figured out, we will do the e-book version.  That's the reverse of how we usually do things, but for a kid's picture and story book it seems to make sense. 

Thoughts on the Acceptance of Indie and Self-Publishing

Recently, I read a front page article in our local daily paper, regarding a local author who had considerable success with a series of Romance books.  It was called “Beaumont writer pens steamy bestseller (Edmonton Journal, Sept 25, 2014).  There were a number of aspects to the story that I found interesting, not the least of which was that it was printed at all.

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/Beaumont+writer+pens+sizzling+bestseller/10232933/story.html

The writer in question (pen name K.C. Lynn) has sold over 100,000 copies of her “Temptation” series since it came out in January of this year (three books, book one selling 60,000 copies since January, book two selling 45,000 copies since May and Book three selling over 6,000 copies in the first few days).  They sound like fairly standard Romance content –

·        bad boy meets sweet girl in high school,

·        they date, break up,

·        he joins military, serves in Iraq,

·        she serves in Iraq with a religious charity,

·        she is kidnapped by bad guys,

·        he has to rescue her,

·        though she’s a feisty one,

·        etc..

Its erotic content is not played down: “They’re steamy, rated R for sure” one person who is interviewed in the article is quoted as saying.

Actually, it sounds a bit like Kati of Terra J, though Helena Puumala is firmly in the “close the bedroom door when things start to get too steamy” camp of Romance writers.  Plus, Kati is science fiction based, rather than current events based.

Just a few short years ago, who could imagine a self-published romance novel, let alone an erotic-Romance novel being front page news in a major Canadian daily newspaper?  Not many of us, I would guess.  But money talks, and a book that sells over 100,000 kindle editions could easily make several hundred thousand dollars for the writer, depending on pricing, free downloads, special promotions and the like.  That kind of money tends to lend legitimacy to any activity (well, at least any non-criminal activity).  Add to that the “Fifty Shades of Grey” effect (which, by the way, started out as self-published), and you can see why the business world is no longer so squeamish about these matters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifty_Shades_of_Grey

I would say that over the course of the past 3 or 4 years, the acceptance of Indie/Self-publishing has increased significantly.  Most average people don’t really seem to care much anymore who publishes a book.  Some of the more knowledgeable ones have tended to nod and say “of course” when I have explained the nature of our book publishing business.

Furthermore, as my own analysis of the 2013 Amazon Top 100 fiction ebooks, or Hugh Howie’s “Author Earnings” website has shown, a lot of readers have made the transition from the big publishing houses to Indie/Self-published works.  My analysis for 2013 showed about one quarter of the 2013 Top 100 Kindle fiction ebooks were Indies.  Hugh Howie’s very detailed analysis showed an even higher number so far in 2014, with over one-third of Amazon fiction sales coming from Indie books.  It will be interesting to see what the 2014 Kindle Top 100 fiction books list shows.   I suspect the Indies in that list will have grown considerably, probably exceeding one-third, based on Hugh’s results.

That being said, the front page of the newspaper is not the same as the book pages.  In the book review sections that I have seen (the Globe and Mail in particular), Indie books are not much in evidence.  Some smaller publishers do get reviewed, though the majority of the space is given over to the big five or their imprints.  By and large, the majority of the fiction reviews are still concerned with literary fiction, eschewing genre.  However, based on my reading of these reviews, it seems like a lot of lit-fic is becoming more genre like, with more emphasis on plot and approachable characters.  That’s just my impression – I could be mistaken.  But often when I read a lit-fic review these days that describes the book as magic realism, I think to myself that it sounds an awful lot like fantasy, paranormal or science fiction.

The Romance genre in particular (regardless of the presence or absence of sexual content) has become much more acceptable than in the past.  Publishers are now actively courting that market, though Indies have made huge inroads.  Given the low barriers to entry and modest overhead costs, it is doubtful that big publishers will be able to compete in this market over the long run.  As goes the Romance genre, so will go some of the other genres, such as SF.

Also, at some point, a few of the big established best-selling authors are bound to test the self-publishing waters – perhaps they already are, via pen names.  That’s when things will really get interesting.

The other wild card in all this, is the state of the big print book stores.  Right now, Indies are largely locked out of those retail venues, as are many smaller publishers.  To a very considerable extent, they are the province of the Big Five publishers.  That gives the Big Five an automatic advantage over most everyone else, as print books are still a big part of the market, though a declining one.

Chain bookstores are especially important as a vector for the mega-best sellers.  Those books are bought by casual readers, people who only read a few books per year.  Losing the marketing advantage of the big chain stores like Chapters or Barnes and Noble would be a huge blow for big publishers.  And those stores have been losing money steadily over the last 3 or  4 years, during a relatively prosperous time of the economic cycle.  If they are still bleeding money when the next recession or down market hits, that might be all she wrote for them.

So, in summary, a lot of trends are well on their way to transforming the book market, accelerating the acceptance of Indie and Self-Publishing:

·        Technological changes, which continue to bring increasing ease of production, distribution and consumption of books to the masses.

·        Social changes, which continue to erode the concept of elite curation of cultural products (e.g. someone else knows what’s best).

·        Financial pressures, which threaten existing businesses and business models and force others to remain nimble and customer-centric (e.g. Amazon).

Marking the Valley Art Show and Kati of Terra

We (Kati of Terra writer Helena Puumala and myself) went with Kati of Terra artist Leona Olausen and her husband Ken to an art show called "Marking the Valley", at the Jubilee Auditorium (Kaasa Gallery) last week.  It featured art by 28 different artists from Alberta (mostly near Edmonton, but a few from farther away).

The subject matter was the North Saskatchewan River Valley, the most well-loved and spectacular natural feature in the local area.  Each of the artists gave their own visual interpretation of the valley, using different media and different visual styles.  The show also had a tie-in with work on expanding the river valley trails, which are currently extensive, even greater distances, from Devon to Fort Saskatchewan (nearly 90 km of continuous hiking and biking trails, mostly paved, as well a hundreds of km of secondary trails).

It was very well attended, with many artists, art lovers and river valley lovers present.  I must have looked like an art collector, as several artists gave me (and Helena) their comp wine tickets - otherwise it was a cash bar :).

And, yes, I realize that was a pretty lame way to work in the reference to Kati of Terra .

Here are a few pictures.

 

Leona, with her painting

Some of the guests and artwork.



This painting won the peoples's choice vote.

Whither Chapters 3 (and whither Barnes and Noble)

Indigo Books and Music Inc is the major corporation behind Canada’s big book chains - Chapters, Coles, Indigo and the World’s Biggest Bookstore (the latter now shuttered).   I have written a couple of blogs about the fate of Chapters (or at least their recent financial results).  In this blog, I will update this data, using Quarter 1 results for 2014-15 (April to June, 2014).

Quarter 1 results Chapters Indigo, 2015 fiscal year.

The data below is taken from a transcript of a conference call make on August 5, 2014, between Chapters executives and some key investors, as well as the First Quarter Report, for the 13-Week Period Ended June 28, 2014.  Both of these documents are available on-line.

They were painting a pretty rosy picture in the investor conference call transcript (claiming “forward traction”, but it doesn’t really look that way to me.  Here’s the trend, which looks more like wheel spinning than forward traction, to this observer (note that these are not inflation adjusted):

2009: -1.2 million loss

2010: -2.3 million loss

2011: -5.3 million loss

2012: -18.1 million loss

2013: -5.5 million loss

2014: -15.0 million loss

2015: - 14.0 million loss

I should note that for 2015, the loss before income taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) was 7.1 million, but net loss as shown above was 14.0 million.  Opinions vary concerning the relative merits of reporting EBITDA versus net profits or losses.  Some people think that EBITDA is a good measure of profitability, others consider it a bit of a gimmick.  I will go with the 14 million dollars figure, as that is consistent with the rest of the times series values I use in the blog.

That’s 7 straight first quarters without a profit.  Granted, the business tends to be dominated by the other three quarters, especially the Christmas sales quarter, so a first quarter loss may not be particularly indicative of trouble over the course of the year.  In fact, the data below (also from documents on their website) shows clearly that a Q1 loss need not mean a loss for the year.

Year	Annual $M	Q1 $M
2009	72.45	-1.2
2010	71.62	-2.3
2011	43.88	-5.3
2012	-11.22	-18.1
2013	0.367	-5.5
2014	-29.98	-15
2015		-14

However, if we drill down a little deeper and do a simple X-Y chart showing the correlation between Q1 losses and Annual Profit/Loss, a different picture emerges, as shown by the graph below.

Here we can see that Q1 and annual results have historically been quite closely linked, with a simple bivariate regression showing an R-squared of .82.  Essentially, that means that 82 percent of the variance in annual earnings can be explained by the variance in Q1 earnings.  In fact, we can use this relationship to predict the annual loss for fiscal 2015, based on the first quarter.  That’s shown by the red star, as an approximate loss of 29.6 million dollars.

I should note that I excluded 2012 from the regression - that was the year that Chapters sold the Kobo ebook store, so it had a large cash infusion.  You can’t pull off something like that every year, so I excluded it from the calculation.  If I put that data point back into the series, the projected loss goes down to about 8.8 million dollars.

Another point worth noting was that the 2015 fiscal year (April 1, 2014 to March 31, 2015) included Easter, which wasn’t the case in Quarter 1 last year.  So, the marginal year over year improvement between Q1 2013 and Q1 2014 might just be a fluke of the calendar, as the Easter holiday season will generate some additional sales.

Looking at the composition of sales, the big revenue gainers were in the non-book areas.  Revenues from books were up about $0.5 million, which is a gain of less than half a percent. If we factor in inflation, that’s actually represents a reduction in real dollars.

General Merchandise (toys and stuff) were up, though.  An example of this that  they emphasize is the “American Girls” line of dolls that they are now marketing.  The General Merchandise category now accounts for 27.4% of the business, compared to 21.9% last year.

Correspondingly, Books are now 68.1% of sales, compared to 72.6% last year.  Note that “Books” also includes magazines, newspapers calendars and shipping revenue.  The inclusion of  shipping revenue with the “Print” category seems like a peculiar decision – perhaps it is money earned for shipping physical books.

The latest Chapters catalogue came out with the Globe and Mail, in September.  It is entitled “The Joy of Fall, 2014 Guide”.  An informal content analysis that I did showed that:

·         90 of 176 identifiable items were books, for 51% of the total.

·         14 of 32 pages were primarily dominated by books, for 44% of the total.

So, depending on how you operationalize this variable, just over or just under half the content being pushed were books, with the remainder being non-books.  The non-book items consisted primarily of household items for the kitchen, a lot of soft snugly stuff like pillows, throw rugs, scarves, and a selection of electronic items, including some ebook related items.

An interesting development that I have noticed at Chapters recently, is that “front table” books seem to lack prices on the covers these days.  And the tables themselves often don't have prices posted, so one sees signs saying “40% Off”, and is left wondering “40% off of what?”.  I suspect this is a small but significant indicator that the notion of the value of a printed book is so nebulous right now, that publishers and retailers prefer it to remain free floating, at least for the books that they are pushing hard.  I don't know if this trend extends to the bulk of the shelved books, deeper into the store.  At any rate, it leaves the consumer unsure of just what his or her purchase will come to at the cash register.  Contrast that with Amazon (or Kobo), where prices are prominently displayed.
 

So, Chapters is well on its way to being a general merchandise store that features a substantial book presence, rather than a bookstore per se.  For writers and publishers, this means that Chapters is effectively shrinking in importance, even if their changing business strategy helps them to remain profitable.  No doubt this is especially the case for mid-listers, who will be the first to be displaced by the transformation to general merchandise.

Quarter 1 results Barnes & Noble, 2015 fiscal year.

Barnes and Noble has also recently reported its Q1 results.  As is the case with Chapters, they painted the results optimistically, but it still rung in at a loss of $28 million. Their results are somewhat more difficult to interpret, due to the impact of the closure of Borders in 2011, and the various financial implications of the rise and fall of the Nook reader of the past 5 years or so. 

Year	Annual $M	Q1 $M
2008	75.920	-2.224
2010	36.676	12.267
2011	-73.920	-62.518
2012	-68.687	-56.606
2013	-157.806	-39.828
2014	-47.268	-87.022
2015		-28.400

As the chart shows, there is quite a bit of scatter in the data, so the predicted value for Fiscal 2015 based on Q1 results (a loss of $21.6 million) is rather more tentative than was the result for Chapters. 

So, given the volatility in the recent data, we will have to wait and see how Barnes and Noble do over the course of the year.  They might come in with a relatively small loss or even a small profit, depending to a large extent on how the decoupling of the Nook and physical retail operations goes.  Being further from the American scene, I won't say anything more definitive than that.

Kati of Terra Book 3, Showdown on the Planet of the Slavers now in print form on Amazon

Kati 3 is now available in print, from Amazon.  All the Kati of Terra books can now be purchased in ebook or print form.  They are also on Amazon's price matching offer, where you get the ebook for 99 cents if you buy the paper book.  The paper books are about sixteen dollars (it can vary with Amazon promotions, exchange rates, and so on).

http://www.amazon.com/Kati-Terra-Book-Three-Showdown-ebook/dp/B00KHBN8FG

Astrophysics Corner, Part 12 – Cats in Space

I don’t know about anyone else, but I can’t think of the phrase “Cats in Space” without hearing the lead-in to the old “Pigs in Space” skits from the Muppet Show.

But, no matter.  Since we recently did a literary blog about Cats in Science Fiction, it seems appropriate to do an astrophysics blog about Cats in Space, or at least cat images and symbols in astronomy.  There actually have been cats in space, which we will get to later.  But first, let’s look at astronomical features named after cats, beginning with some constellations.

Leo

This is one of the really great constellations for urban star-gazers.  It has many bright stars and actually looks something like the thing that it is named after – i.e. a lion.  That would be the Nemean Lion that Hercules slew, as one of his twelve labours.  This cat took helpless maidens to his cave, to lure warriors to their deaths, in their efforts to free the women.  It was impervious to weaponry, so Hercules killed it with his bare hands.  Zeus then put the lion in  the sky to commemorate the deed, so we can enjoy Leo to this day.  Or so the story goes.

 

From my part of the world, Leo is best seen in the early spring evening sky, looking south, a little above the plane of the ecliptic.  Clearly that will vary with latitude, though.  It’s not too hard to envision it as a lion, or at least some kind of animal, as the constellation map  shows.

It has many bright stars, notably Regulus (think of it as the lion’s right foot)  and Denobela (the end of the tail).  There are also some nice double stars, that can be split in smaller telescopes.  Gamma Leonis is a favorite of amateur astronomers.  It also contains the small M-Class star, Wolf 359, famous in Star Trek history for the location of a decisive battle with the Borg.

Leo also has several notable deep sky objects, especially the galaxies M65, M66, M105 and M96 (those are known as Messier numbers).  Though they are quite bright deep sky objects, I haven’t had a lot of luck finding them from my city back yard.  But they are pretty easy in a reasonably dark sky.

The meteor shower known as the Leonids occurs in November, and appears to come from that part of the sky.  That shower can be pretty remarkable.  I recall seeing some amazing meteors in the early 2000s, including some that broke up in the atmosphere with a spectacular fireball effect.

Note that since Leo is near the plane of the ecliptic, the planets sometimes pass through it, which can be useful for orienting observations.

Leo (Minor)

This one’s kind of a dud really.  It is quite small, and its stars are all rather faint.  Even in a dark sky, it’s pretty tough to make it out (it’s above Leo, if you can recognize it).  It has some interesting galaxies, but you need a dark sky and a good telescope to make them out.  There is no interesting mythology associated with Leo Minor, as it wasn’t designated until the late 1600s.

Lynx

This is another very faint constellation in the northern sky, without much to note about it.  Supposedly, it was designated Lynx because you need the eyesight of a cat to see it.  It does have an interesting globular cluster (NGC 2419), which is high above the galactic plane.  It is supposed to be findable in a reasonably dark sky with a medium sized telescope.
 

Cat’s Eye Nebula

This is a classic planetary nebular, and a very beautiful one, as you can see from the Hubble photo.  The term planetary is a misnomer, given early in the history of telescope observations, as they look something like planets through a small telescope.

It is located in the constellation Draco, high in the northern sky.  In fact, it is very close to the north ecliptic pole, similar to how Polaris is close to the North Equatorial Pole.  In other words, it is 90 degrees above the sun’s position.

The concentric rings are actually bubbles of dust, produced by a central star that has ejected some of its matter, late in its life.  The colours depend on the type of matter that is in each ring and some of the other structural features are probably related to magnetic fields. 

The sun might look something like this in several billion years, as stars in that mass range are thought to go through this stage.

The important thing here, is that it does look rather like a cat’s eye.

Cat’s Paw Nebula

This is another spectacular nebula, in Scorpio.  It is obvious why it is called the Cat’s Paw from the picture.  In this case, the nebula is an emission nebula, similar to the Orion nebula.  Rather than being an artifact of a star near the end of its life, it is in fact the birthplace of new stars.  In fact, it is an extremely prolific birthplace, and may well be said to be having kittens.

Mars (face, cat, mouse)

A fair bit of cat lore has accreted around the planet Mars since the space age began, and we started sending probes there.  Perhaps the most famous of these is the so-called Face on Mars, in the Cydonia region.  Many observers have claimed that it has a leonine (lion-like) appearance.  Several books have been written on the subject, claiming that it is not a natural object.  There have also been proposals that it has a link to the Sphinx, in Egypt, which also has a lion-like appearance (a hybrid lion body and human head).   Those who wish to read more about this might start with the wiki page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_correlation_theory

Also worth noting is the so-called cat on Mars, though I don’t believe any books have been written about it.  It falls into that category we looked at earlier (pareidolia), whereby humans have a tendency to see familiar figures in random configurations of shapes.

And since a Martian Cat obviously needs a food source, here’s another picture that someone discovered in the Curiosity rover’s archives.  Yes, it looks amazingly like a Mars Mouse.

Fellicite the astro-cat

Finally, there is the story of the cats who actually did go into space.  I didn’t know about this until recently, but apparently the French launched a couple of cats into space in the 1960s.  From a NASA site:

On October 18, 1963, French scientists launched the first cat into space on a Veronique AGI sounding rocket No. 47. The cat, named Félicette, was successfully retrieved after a parachute descent, but a second feline flight on October 24 ran into difficulties that prevented recovery.

http://history.nasa.gov/animals.html

 

So there you have it – a comprehensive list of cat related lore concerning the sciences of astrophysics, astronomy and astronautics.