Amazon's New Tab

Didn't I say this just a couple days ago?  Amazon would come out with a tab the minute I rooted the Nook Color.  Scroll down in the article to learn what little we know about the autumnal release.

Amazon Tablet

What gambit of interest, what technological improvement  has traditional publishing made in the last year/5 years/10 years/25 years?

Ooo!  Me!  Me!  Me! Call on ME!

I can remember when it was a big deal, I suppose I should write that as Big Deal (trademark pending), when publishing decided to make the covers of romance novels more like greeting cards with the embossing and glitter.

I'm stumped beyond that.  No, no, wait.  I got a really excellent cook book by Richard Bertinet and it comes with a short DVD so you can see his technique.  Boy, that was very helpful.  And he's a nice man, I wrote to him and he wrote back.  DOUGH

You should be able to do that with an ebook, right?  Include a little tutorial session.

But I don't want to go off on yet another rant about legacy publishing and how they've been stiffing writers and the public for well over a generation now.

Let's talk about entertainment for a brief moment.  Certainly the Great Depression occurred well before I was born and I actually know very little about it from a financial perspective because me and math are not BFF, but I do know about it from an entertainment POV.  That's a decade I am quite familiar with film-wise much more than the 1940's or even 1950's.

It cost 10 cents to go to the movies in the 1930s.  Maybe even less in a small town 2nd run kind of situation.  Even though times were terrible, people still need to get their minds off their problems and could afford 10 cents.
As I have said Shirley Temple was one of the biggest stars of the decade and musicals were so popular.  Think of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

This is the song "Pick Yourself Up" by the great genius Jerome Kern, lyrics by Dorothy Fields.



What in entertainment today is suggesting we look on the bright side, pick ourselves up, rally, anything positive?
What's uplifting?  Well, gee, I can't think of anything from NYC or LA.  And the disposable income people have is dwindling, not increasing.  It's not going to be increasing any time soon.  So the old models of what people wanted to read or see or listen to is probably going to change even more.

Yet legacy publishing can't see it.  Well, good for them.  Stick to what you know.  Double that for network television.  And let's cancel the good old shows and program in some cheap to produce crap reality shows.  Hey guess what, there's this thing called the internet and the viewing audience doesn't need you anymore.

I wish there was a Charlie Chan marathon on this weekend...