Although I have found social media sites somewhat gratifying, it's difficult to say if they are beneficial or not.
I can promote my book to a hundred other people promoting their own book, check my weebly site (it at least tells me how many people looked at this post), and wonder how my book sales will look at the end of the month. That last one bothers me. Amazon updates sales at the end of the month. So I have no idea if all my marketing is falling flat. I could literally be wasting my time and not know for thirty days before I should try something new. I contacted Amazon to ask them if there was a feature that at least told me how many people at least browsed my book. I thought it would be a great idea, that way I could market my book more effectively, come up with a strategy of why people were window shopping and not buying, make money which would ultimately make Amazon money. Their response was: "For account security reasons, we're unable to share specific information about our customers and their browsing history. Thank you for your understanding of this policy. Thanks for using Amazon KDP." I don't care if Janey Smith browsed for porn before and after she looked at my book, I don't even have to know her name. I just want to know if anyone looked. Amazon can do this. They have programming designed especially for it, similar to Google's "What's trending now" feature, or their adsense. I understand this is a great marketing tool. It's not like poker. By holding their cards close to their chest, they are taking away an effective money making tool from their submitters. Well, that's my mini rant. Hopefully I made a million dollars on my book and can use that money to create a Nerf army to take over the wonderful Amazon and liberate the stats.
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I prefer impressionist art, personally. It takes skill and effort to emulate the world around us. And while I still feel that "modern art" has a place, I don't think it should be in museums or art galleries.
Basically someone jacks off onto some canvas and calls it art. And maybe this was interesting when it first happened, and sold for millions of dollars, but to me the rest that followed was all in the same vein of P.T. Barnum's "there's a sucker born every minute" and the Emperor's New Clothes. The "artist" has taken nothing, ascribed meaning to it, and then sold it for money. If you like to do something like this, and you feel it expresses how you feel, more power to you. Just don't tell me it was difficult to do or required any kind of skill. Sure, you may have spent hours at it, thinking about it, rationalising it's meaning to someone else, and to you it might be worth a million dollars, but it's not a pure communication, as art should be. A newspaper comic strip has more validity in this realm than modern art, often because it takes well known cultural perceptions and looks at them in a different way. "Modern art" is completely dependent on the artist to explain their work (or not explain in a sense of irony, I guess). If aliens landed and were peaceful, and really wanted to get to know our culture, and how we felt about it, would they look at a pile of bricks and know it was supposed to represent the labor of (hu)man? Or would they get more out of Dilbert? Men in Black 3:
Like movies that run out of ideas and involve time travel? AKA: Harry Potter, Star Trek (several times, now), etc. At least certain movies got rid of the idea right our of the box (Tomb Raider), or used it wonderfully (Back to the Future, Donny Darko). I loath it when a good movie or show arbitrarily involves time travel in it's plot, and while MIB3 sort of did this, they poked fun at it a little, and its way better than the second one, which kind of repeated the first one. This movie isn't without its time paradox's, or head scratching moments where you ask "how the hell does that work?", like how they defeat the time traveling villain, or why there are such cool weapons held in a facility that has very dangerous criminals. Or why the security guards are so dense, you know, the average dumb movie questions. But it still works as a character driven movie. We get to know why K is such a hardnose, and why he backed J from the begining. See it? Absolutely. Try to resolve the time paradox's involved in the ending? Naw, grab some popcorn instead. Avengers: Yeah, this movie has been out for a while, so why review it now? 'Cause I just saw it. Very well paced, well plotted movie for subjects very fantastical. Somehow I think that if Joss Whedon had directed the X-Men, I would have accepted giant metal robots and yellow spandex, he just makes it work somehow. And that's how I felt about Avengers, like I was seeing something fantastical and almost absurd, but I bought into it totally. I also smell sequel. That's just obvious, but the more deep reason is the fight scene between Iron Man, Thor, And Captain America. Normally what happens in a movie is that we are shown something that is really cool in the begining, and that very cool thing is what saves the hero's at the last minute. This doesn't happen. Don't get me wrong, the ending is viable. However when Iron Man faces off against Thor, we discover that Thor's lightning makes Iron Man even stronger (energy levels rose to 425%). And when Thor hits Cap's shield, it results in a magnificent explosion. None of these interesting little tidbits affects the end of the movie: No shield explosion stops the aliens. Tony doesn't need a power boost. Therefore, it is foreshadowing to how the bad guy will be defeated in the next movie. Flaws in this movie? Yeah. Why does Loki just sit around watching the Hero's fight instead of trying to make it look like he's escaping? I wouldn't have taken him back to the Shields airship. Banner conveniently knows how to control his rage. Odin being able to send Thor back to earth, but none of his ragbag of team members? Or the aliens all die at once. Mind control can be solved with a hit on the head. Still, why the hero's face off against one another is really good, and each reason has merit. Loki is pretty bad-ass as far as villains go. Go see this movie. And please, wait til the end of the credits before leaving. It's always worth it. |
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