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BrandorKP posted:Traditional publishers also make it really hard to get published. They don't pick up new authors easily. Somebody a traditional publisher won't take can, write, publish on amazon and do decently. Here's a guy who epitomizes that. He's doing three grand a chapter writing a sprawling space opera in monthly ~30k word chunks as a serial. That's ~10 cents a word. Standard for membership to the SFWA is 6 cents a word. Magius1337est posted:and all of this is in the consumer's favor Bullshit. Every bit of savings in that logistics chain comes out of someone they've bled for it, be it suppliers extorted for better prices and terms, or employees kept part time and signed up for welfare. Walmart is a major employer in a lot of markets without major employers left, and it treats those people like poo poo. Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 11:11 on Jan 18, 2018 |
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Jan 18, 2018 10:56
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boner confessor posted:i dont care if there's a lot of lovely games on steam because they quickly fall to the bottom of the ecosystem and nobody cares about them. meanwhile it's pretty easy to tell if a game is poo poo or not vs. deceptively marketed knit sweaters or long legged bears on amazon I feel like it's also important to draw a distinction between Amazon's distribution of physical books and ebooks, even Blu-Rays and music, and their distribution of everything else in the world. Their system for media which can be easily catalogued by its very nature is very effective, in terms of being able to quickly find what you want and order it. For everything else, it's quite poo poo, especially if you don't already know the exact product you want to buy.
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Jan 18, 2018 14:25
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 http://p-kyle.tumblr.com/post/95120917356/frontier-patrick-kyle-2014
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Jan 18, 2018 15:53
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Liquid Communism posted:Here's a guy who epitomizes that. He's doing three grand a chapter writing a sprawling space opera in monthly ~30k word chunks as a serial. For indirect comparison's sake, Amazon paid authors $0.00506 (0.5 cents) per page read in December 2017. VVVV I did say "indirect" dude. Sundae fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Jan 18, 2018 |
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Jan 18, 2018 17:27
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Sundae posted:For indirect comparison's sake, Amazon paid authors $0.00506 (0.5 cents) per page read in December 2017. Man wait til you find out radio/streaming plays pay way less than selling a track too.
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Jan 18, 2018 17:42
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Liquid Communism posted:Bullshit. Every bit of savings in that logistics chain comes out of someone they've bled for it, be it suppliers extorted for better prices and terms, or employees kept part time and signed up for welfare. Long term that'll gently caress em, and I think we are starting to see that now. It's not so much companies that compete as entire supply chains. Walmart has been loving over its partners and making the supply chain less efficient. I think that's starting to bite it in the rear end. Personally Amazon seems to be taking a different approach. I think they want to force thier partners to operate with specific practices. They have a way they think is most efficient for the supply chain to work (which may or not be correct). They'll whap their partners with a stick to make them do it that way. They've automated the stick too (and from the sound of it imperfectly).
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Jan 18, 2018 20:51
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This will surprise some people but Walmart warehouses aren’t a horrible place to work from what I hear from people that work at them. Amazon warehouses are the bottom of the barrel as far major warehouses go.
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Jan 19, 2018 00:30
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sbaldrick posted:This will surprise some people but Walmart warehouses aren’t a horrible place to work from what I hear from people that work at them. Amazon warehouses are the bottom of the barrel as far major warehouses go. The shipping side of Walmart has always been a pretty good gig. When my uncle drove trucks that was his dream job the way retail people dream of Costco. Walmart's dominance was in how good their supply chain was, how quickly and efficiently they could keep the shelves stocked; paying their drivers and warehouse workers well to make sure shipments were correct and on time was a big part of it. They then used that dominance to start bleeding their suppliers and actual stores dry.
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Jan 19, 2018 10:48
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fishmech posted:Man wait til you find out radio/streaming plays pay way less than selling a track too. Man the new "creative economy" that everyone's expecting to rise up after all the retail jobs are gone and all the manufacturing and service jobs have been taken over by robots is going to pay horribly.
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Jan 19, 2018 21:47
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I think we can look to the past: "In service". It's going to be poo poo. The wealthy particularly in Asia are already looking to have Westerners in Butler / service type roles.
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Jan 19, 2018 21:53
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But like seriously, another aspect of it is that when you're getting paid by the word, you're usually in a situation where you're getting paid once. Oh sure you make 10 cents a word, you're making about $45 per page written. If the publication your work is going into sells 1 copy or 1 billion copies, you're getting the same 10 cents a word the one time, and not making any more money until you sell the same work somewhere else (assuming you hadn't gone and as part of that sale given a serious exclusivity to the buyer). Or maybe in a while you're able to bring the work into a separately published book of your own where you finally get royalties. $0.00506 per page read by random people who haven't bought your book sounds terrible at first - but if 9000 people or so read the page in that manner you end up with the same $45 for the page as the by-the-word guy got, plus you probably got some outright sales of the book separately that trickled in a few cents to dollars per page in total. And if for some reason that book were to blow up you'd make more. Sure, that patreon dude is making a bunch per page with just 400 people or so, but those are people willing to pay in the first place directly. Kindle Unlimited payments are from people who aren't willing to fork over money for a book directly and such can always be expected to be a bigger audience.
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Jan 20, 2018 01:15
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BrandorKP posted:I think we can look to the past: "In service". It's going to be poo poo. The wealthy particularly in Asia are already looking to have Westerners in Butler / service type roles. I'd rather work for an Asian oligarch than Western at this point. Also, upgrade your account....
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Jan 20, 2018 02:41
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BlueBlazer posted:I'd rather work for an Asian oligarch than Western at this point. If you had any idea how foreign domestic servants are treated in China you wouldn't. It's worse in central Asia.
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Jan 20, 2018 08:28
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BlueBlazer posted:Also, upgrade your account.... Next time I log onto SA from a computer I might. That could take months though.
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Jan 20, 2018 09:52
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Is amazon basics ruining retail? I haven't been let down by the cheap cables they
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Jan 22, 2018 23:16
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fivehead posted:Is amazon basics ruining retail? I haven't been let down by the cheap cables they Amazon basics tend to be of good quality and half the price of going to a department store. Retail is dead, we have to let it go, like Optimus Prime.
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Jan 22, 2018 23:21
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dont even fink about it posted:Amazon basics tend to be of good quality and half the price of going to a department store. Retail is dead, we have to let it go, like Optimus Prime. Any retailer that subsists on sales of $35 DVI-A cables ($50 if you need the 3m one) deserves to be shot in the head even if the replacement is amazon.
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Jan 22, 2018 23:22
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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suck my woke dick posted:Any retailer that subsists on sales of $35 DVI-A cables ($50 if you need the 3m one) deserves to be shot in the head even if the replacement is amazon. I mean that kind of thing is exactly why Best Buy pivoted so much to things like Geek Squad instead of just relying on MONSTER CABLE PREMIUM COMPONENT markup type poo poo.
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Jan 22, 2018 23:30
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there wolf posted:The shipping side of Walmart has always been a pretty good gig. When my uncle drove trucks that was his dream job the way retail people dream of Costco. Walmart's dominance was in how good their supply chain was, how quickly and efficiently they could keep the shelves stocked; paying their drivers and warehouse workers well to make sure shipments were correct and on time was a big part of it. They then used that dominance to start bleeding their suppliers and actual stores dry. The only reason Walmart treats truckers well is because they need to. Last I heard there's just always a shortage of truckers across America and bad truck drivers ultimately cost you money when they inevitably crash. If you pay well to get the non-crashy drivers then they cost you less. I remember we'd always be reading about how awesome it was that they had drivers with over a million accident-free miles. Trust me, soon as Walmart finds a way to cut that cost your uncle is turbo hosed. They cut every single thing they possibly can as soon as they can.
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Jan 23, 2018 00:06
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A business built around low prices ruthlessly cutting costs?? 
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Jan 23, 2018 00:39
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fivehead posted:Is amazon basics ruining retail? I haven't been let down by the cheap cables they For clothing most all source production to a very few companies to begin with, so it makes sense for Amazon to just work directly with them.
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Jan 23, 2018 01:08
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The actual retail experience of Amazon is like going to Target except they also randomly stock things from Marshall's, Sak's Fifth Avenue, and Value Village, so developing a consistent, IKEA-esque brand would probably be a really good idea for them. Theoretically I'm against it but I'm also exhausted of having to weed through a bunch of dubious Chinese merchants just to buy a sweater, only to find the one that's in my size is mysteriously thirty dollars more expensive than all the others and when it arrives it's actually just a photo of a sweater. I'm sure this system is actually beneficial to Amazon somehow but I'd love to be able to just hop on and find what I want.
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Jan 23, 2018 01:30
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fivehead posted:Is amazon basics ruining retail? I haven't been let down by the cheap cables they I haven't bought a ton of Amazon Basics stuff, but the stand out for me will always be the $15 laptop bag I bought maybe three years ago that replaced a $200 messenger bag I'd been carrying around and that's now gathering dust in my closet. It started falling apart after around two years of daily use, but it was $15 so who cares? I just ended up buying another one to replace it.
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Jan 23, 2018 02:17
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suck my woke dick posted:Any retailer that subsists on sales of $35 DVI-A cables ($50 if you need the 3m one) deserves to be shot in the head even if the replacement is amazon. I'm probably biased because I used to work for one of those companies, but eh, I blame the customers a bit. The model of selling big-ticket stuff below cost and subsidizing it with expensive accessories and service plans only works because nobody chooses which store to go to based on who sells the cheapest cables.
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Jan 23, 2018 03:01
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I have an Amazon Basics surge protector, mouse, office chair, cat carrier, ethernet cable, backpack, and HDMI cable, accumulated over about two years. They are all fine-to-great--stuff in the "it doesn't need to be expensive, it just needs to work every time" range. It's stuff like this that cut into those lovely practices of selling HDMI cables to old people at a 600% markup. All of these things cost half or less of what they would cost anywhere else.
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Jan 23, 2018 03:27
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ToxicSlurpee posted:The only reason Walmart treats truckers well is because they need to. Last I heard there's just always a shortage of truckers across America and bad truck drivers ultimately cost you money when they inevitably crash. If you pay well to get the non-crashy drivers then they cost you less. I remember we'd always be reading about how awesome it was that they had drivers with over a million accident-free miles. Nah, uncle turbo-hosed himself by becoming an anti-gov nutter living off the grid. And I never for a second thought Walmart paid any of it's staff well out of the goodness of their hearts. They knew lovely wages= lovely work for shipping, but had to learn it all over again with their store staff.
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Jan 23, 2018 03:32
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fishmech posted:But like seriously, another aspect of it is that when you're getting paid by the word, you're usually in a situation where you're getting paid once. Oh sure you make 10 cents a word, you're making about $45 per page written. If the publication your work is going into sells 1 copy or 1 billion copies, you're getting the same 10 cents a word the one time, and not making any more money until you sell the same work somewhere else (assuming you hadn't gone and as part of that sale given a serious exclusivity to the buyer). Or maybe in a while you're able to bring the work into a separately published book of your own where you finally get royalties. Patreon dude retains all his rights, and can edit and publish traditionally at his lesiure. He's effectively getting paid for his draft in real time.
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Jan 23, 2018 03:44
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Liquid Communism posted:Patreon dude retains all his rights, and can edit and publish traditionally at his lesiure. He's effectively getting paid for his draft in real time. Yes but he's not typical. I'm talking about someone making the same as him on a per word basis but in the normal publishing market. Like ghost writers and others of the sort, or authors in fiction magazines that are getting popular enough to get beyond the basic minimum pro rates.
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Jan 23, 2018 04:19
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ToxicSlurpee posted:The only reason Walmart treats truckers well is because they need to. Last I heard there's just always a shortage of truckers across America and bad truck drivers ultimately cost you money when they inevitably crash. If you pay well to get the non-crashy drivers then they cost you less. I remember we'd always be reading about how awesome it was that they had drivers with over a million accident-free miles. The Freightliner Inspiration Truck is the first licensed autonomous commercial truck to operate on an open public highway in the United States, showcasing what is possible through the energy of infinite inspiration. Hint for job seekers: don't go into trucking. Neon Noodle posted:Hint for job seekers, learn to operate guillotine Yeah, that too. ryonguy fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Jan 23, 2018 |
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Jan 23, 2018 05:05
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I dunno, we've had freight rail for centuries yet you would think they would automate that before trucking, but it hasn't happened yet.
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Jan 23, 2018 08:14
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dont even fink about it posted:I have an Amazon Basics surge protector, mouse, office chair, cat carrier, ethernet cable, backpack, and HDMI cable, accumulated over about two years. They are all fine-to-great--stuff in the "it doesn't need to be expensive, it just needs to work every time" range. It's stuff like this that cut into those lovely practices of selling HDMI cables to old people at a 600% markup. All of these things cost half or less of what they would cost anywhere else. The first Amazon Basics thing I bought was the mouse I'm using right now. It's a simple, black mouse with no frills. It's just a mouse. It has two buttons and a scroll wheel. Nothing fancy. I'm liking it a lot. It's one of the more comfortable mice I've had and it isn't trying to be flashy. It works very well and was cheap as gently caress. The main reason I bought it was I got sick of wading through all the ones that tried to be super amazing awesome mice but also cost way more than I wanted to spend on a mouse. That description really fits. It won't win awards and doesn't have a pro gamer promoting it but I don't care. I want a sturdy mouse that works. That's it. Amazon delivered that and I didn't even have to put on pants to buy it. One of the biggest issues with retail is that they're trying to pass off cheap, flashy garbage that breaks quickly as fancy top of the line stuff. Everything has to be luxury this and celebrity preferred that. They focus on the marketing and the package instead of the product while cutting the costs of the product to the bone. It's easy to find pretty but shoddily made garbage but difficult to find things that will last. Guess I'm an odd duck in America in that I don't want flashy things with 500 buttons. My toaster doesn't need to be a $500 thing with 40 buttons and precise temperature control. It doesn't need electronics at all. It needs a plug, the thing you push down, the dial, and heating coils. I put bread in it and it toasts it. That's it. That's all it needs to do. My coffee maker has a switch and nothing else. Not even a clock. I put the coffee grounds and some water in, I flip the switch, and coffee comes out. That's all that needs to happen. ToxicSlurpee fucked around with this message at 09:24 on Jan 23, 2018 |
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Jan 23, 2018 09:20
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One thing I like about Amazon Basics is that you know exactly what you're going to get. It's almost impossible to try to correlate quality and price without relying on brands because every independent seller lies through their teeth when it comes to the spec sheet. Give me more upmarket Amazon branded stuff please. Amazon Basic bath towels are $15ish. Pinzon, another Amazon brand, sells bath towels for $22. I have enough faith in the brand that I trust the AB and Pizion towels actually are what they say they are on the spec sheet, and a 30% price bump is actually a fair price for the increase in specs. Chuu fucked around with this message at 09:37 on Jan 23, 2018 |
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Jan 23, 2018 09:34
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Panfilo posted:I dunno, we've had freight rail for centuries yet you would think they would automate that before trucking, but it hasn't happened yet.
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Jan 23, 2018 10:20
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ryonguy posted:The Freightliner Inspiration Truck is the first licensed autonomous commercial truck to operate on an open public highway in the United States, showcasing what is possible through the energy of infinite inspiration. Hint for job seekers, learn to operate guillotine
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Jan 23, 2018 13:22
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Panfilo posted:I dunno, we've had freight rail for centuries yet you would think they would automate that before trucking, but it hasn't happened yet. The labor costs of freight rail are way, way lower than trucking and, unlike long distance trucking, there aren't a pile of safety issues that are difficult to address without making it even more labor intensive and slower. There's just no good reason to do it yet, although some companies are trying anyway. You don't hear about it because it's not as sexy/scary as automated trucking.
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Jan 23, 2018 15:50
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ToxicSlurpee posted:One of the biggest issues with retail is that they're trying to pass off cheap, flashy garbage that breaks quickly as fancy top of the line stuff. Everything has to be luxury this and celebrity preferred that. They focus on the marketing and the package instead of the product while cutting the costs of the product to the bone. It's easy to find pretty but shoddily made garbage but difficult to find things that will last. Guess I'm an odd duck in America in that I don't want flashy things with 500 buttons. My toaster doesn't need to be a $500 thing with 40 buttons and precise temperature control. It doesn't need electronics at all. It needs a plug, the thing you push down, the dial, and heating coils. I put bread in it and it toasts it. That's it. That's all it needs to do. My coffee maker has a switch and nothing else. Not even a clock. I put the coffee grounds and some water in, I flip the switch, and coffee comes out. That's all that needs to happen. Ever heard of planned obsolescence? There's a reason things have $50 worth of buttons and IoT connectivity and not $5 worth of more durable parts.
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Jan 23, 2018 17:07
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A good video on how only middle income malls are dying and upscale malls are thriving https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0PyzrTze2U kinda reinforces the point of amazon taking away all the low and middle tier income items you'd find at JCP or Sears and doing it way better malls are going to have to attract higher end premium items to stay relevant, more neiman marcus and such
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Jan 23, 2018 17:44
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Sounds like I was right on the Toys 'r' Us thing; mass-produced cheap or moderately priced plastic crap you can buy literally anywhere isn't worth leaving the house to browse once you know what you're looking for.
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Jan 23, 2018 18:00
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Chuu posted:One thing I like about Amazon Basics is that you know exactly what you're going to get. It's almost impossible to try to correlate quality and price without relying on brands because every independent seller lies through their teeth when it comes to the spec sheet. I saw an Amazon ad for a neat leaking keyboard on Facebook the other day, it looked like some nifty retro future thing, almost like old typewriter keys, and I was like, neat, I'll check it out. I clicked the link and the motherfucking thing was 1000 dollars. Who spends 1000 dollars on a keyboard?
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Jan 23, 2018 18:03
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Magius1337est posted:A good video on how only middle income malls are dying and upscale malls are thriving
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