Claude Nougat - The Blog

A New Marketing Tool: Self Competition or a Singular Price War to Promote my Book

noreply@blogger.com (Claude Nougat) — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 08:53:00 +0000

Cover based on my painting of a hieratic Sicilian lion

Price wars around books exploded with the rise in digital publishing. It all began with the Amazon Kindle, when Amazon offered new titles from best-selling authors at around $10, trying to break the prices set by traditional publishers. That move was quickly countered by Steve Jobs when he launched the iPad. With the so-called "agency model", he let publishers set their own retail price and e-book prices moved back up to around $17.

A golden opportunity for self-published authors! Let me tell you, my fellow authors didn't waste any time.

Starting in 2010, Amanda Hocking, John Locke and J.A.Konrath were raking in $$$ with prices in the $2.99 to 99 cents range. John Locke even managed to sell one million books on Amazon in 5 months.

Since books sold so well at 99 cents, why not go one step further and make them free? Most authors who tried it wax enthusiastic, convinced that the thousands of free book downloads help to spread the word about their other books. Certainly a vital marketing move for new authors (including yours truly). One just hopes that people do take the time to read all those free books...

I don't know whether it really works and I shall tell you all as soon as I find out. Because I've just jumped into that game too now that my book FEAR OF THE PAST is out as a COMPLETE trilogy. I've enrolled it in Amazon's KDP Select program which allows authors to set 5 days of free download every three months. I will let you know on this blog exactly when my book is free, promise! But it won't happen before at least two months...

Meantime, please take note of the prices for each of my books in the right side column:

$5.99 for the complete trilogy

$0.99 for Book 1

$3.99 for Book 2

$2.99 for Book 3

Make your calculations: If you buy them separately, book by book, you end up paying $7.97 - practically $8!

If you plunge in and buy the whole trilogy now you save $2! That's much better than a free download: it's a saving!

Now you may well ask, are you crazy? This is self-competition! Why did you do this?

Why did you start a price war among your very own books?

Yes, I know, it seems absurd but it actually does make sense from the point of view of the book itself. FEAR OF THE PAST is a coming of age story - yes, rolled in with a Sicilian family saga, but coming of age is the main point: this is one guy who has to outgrow not only his father and mother (as most of us do) but all his ancestors put together when he meets them in the Circolo di Conversazione, in an abandoned palazzo where they mill about waiting for Judgment Day.

The story doesn't add up if you stop at the first book. You only get the first challenge my protagonist faces: his discovery that he takes after an English adventurer who settled in Sicily in the 18th century - a daring man to be sure, but one who met with one disaster after another, including the loss of the woman he loves, the Duchess of Floridia (a real historical character - she married the King of Naples in 1814)

By Book 2, my protag is in deep trouble as he helplessly watches his family's fortunes collapse. By Book 3, he's grown convinced he is destined for failure as his ancestors were. But he shakes off his fear of failure and finally tries to take his life in his own hands. He comes of age only at the end of book 3, when's he's caught in a pitch battle against the Sicilian and Russian mafia that try to take control of his brilliant creation: a new social network, a cross between Facebook and Second Life. Things take a turn for the worse when the woman he loves is kidnapped...

Now there's a unique thriller for you!

Many people already have read and reviewed Book 1 (see the page above that offers a selection of reviews) but down to a man (and a woman) they all end up saying they are looking forward to the next book. Of course they are! They sense they're missing something.

Mea culpa!

My fault if at the moment of reviewing Book 1 the rest of the trilogy wasn't available. I needed time to write and edit. Each book took me 3 to 4 months before I could publish it. With hindsight, I realize now that I should have waited to finish the trilogy as a whole first and then published it...oh well, live and learn!

Now at last you do have it as a whole.

But I want to confess something to you: all this business of selling books as if they were cups of coffee...really that disturbs me. Isn't my blog enough to convince you that my books are worth reading?

If you enjoy the blog, you're bound to like the books! What makes my blog special makes my books special too. Come on, you'd spend $6 at Starbuck's but with my FEAR OF THE PAST, it will last much longer (it's 500 pages!) and it will give you many different feelings and raise many more questions about matters that concern us all, like how to outgrow our family's inheritance and live free from the past...

To buy it click here: Fear of the Past the complete trilogy

PS: For those of you who've read the early version of my book in Italian (Un Amore Dimenticato published in 2007 - it corresponds roughly to Book 1), you'd be well-advised to download the complete trilogy. You still save a dollar (!) but more importantly, you get the new version: the protagonist is totally changed. He's a young and gifted Italo-American video game creator rather than a 33 year-old staid Northern Italian who's fed up with his boring life. With a different main character the whole book had to be changed - plot included.

And for those who prefer their books in printed version, it is soon coming on CreateSpace: I’ll let you know when.

When Malware Hits Your Blog, Don't Panic! This is What You Can Do

noreply@blogger.com (Claude Nougat) — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 15:21:00 +0000

When malware hits your blog, a nasty warning sign appears telling your readers to stay away from your site. It just happened to me and I confess I panicked!

Here's the warning:

Frightening, isn't it?

The warning is still appearing today (February 21) for those of you who use Google Chrome as a browser - on other browsers (like Firefox) it doesn't appear.

I immediately checked what could be done, followed Google's directions and they verified that there was no longer any malware present on my site.

PLEASE NOTE THAT NOW THE PROBLEM IS FIXED!
MY BLOG IS FREE OF ANY MALWARE - YOU CAN PROCEED SAFELY!

I thought I'd share my experience with you so that the same thing doesn't happen to you.

First, as mentioned in the warning, you want to stay away from the incriminated site: www.idealog.com.

Second, don't panic and follow Google's directions to diagnose the problem and remove the malware. Click into the warning sign and indicate you are the owner of the site. That will direct you to a webmaster page where you'll be asked by Google to prove that you are indeed the owner. That can be a little tricky, there are several ways to do this and I had to try each one out until I found the one that worked for me (it involved pasting a metatag provided by Google into my site's HTLM). Sounds complicated but it really isn't.

The diagnostic was then run on my site and it was determined that no malware was present on it. So I didn't need to proceed with the steps to remove it but should you need to do it, even that is easy to do following their very clear directions. I also did a quick check to find what other sites might be helpful in case of malware, and this is one that looks very informative: securelist.com

But for me, the damage was done...In one day I lost about half my regular traffic! Of course, readers run away, rightly scared, and I can understand that.

Yet, recently my traffic had really shot up and I was so pleased... I had been nominated as a candidate for the Kreativ Blogger Award by author Emma Calin whose witty blog is really worth following. And then I was nominated to the Versatile Blogger Award by Kelley on her attractive Call Me Bookish blog. Kelley is very active: she reviews books, writes for fun and produces educational app content for @BallpointNews... All my heartfelt thanks go to my wonderful blogger friends who nominated me!

By the rules governing the Awards, I was supposed to respond by revealing secrets about myself, things that no one on Internet knew about me...7 secrets for each award, 14 in total (or perhaps more, I lost count)! Honestly, now that I've been hit by this cyber attack I feel like the proverbial turtle, pulling my head and arms in my shell... But now, you know something about me that you probably never suspected: that I really hurt when something like this happens! That's because I am very attached to you my readers...

How long will it take my blog to recover? I don't know, but I count on you all to come back and do tell me that you like me, even if I don't reveal dozens of secrets about myself!

The Americans Have a Tea Party, the Europeans a Beer Party: Angela Merkel's!

noreply@blogger.com (Claude Nougat) — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 10:12:00 +0000

A peculiarity of our times: extremist political ideologies. They used to rise mostly on the left (Hitler and Mussolini were both socialists). Now they emerge on the right. The Americans have a Tea Party, the Europeans have a Beer Party, with Angela Merkel calling the shots.

Both parties are totally convinced they're right and everybody else is wrong. Both have one goal in mind: curb the role of government.

Who's behind the European Beer Party? Angela Merkel, of course. The European press is full of her - even staid financial newspapers like the Italian Sole 24 Ore. Here's their cover picture of their week-end magazine IL (it came out last Saturday):

Note the subtitle: MUTTER MUTLOS: "Mother Without Courage". For some Germans, she's too soft on fellow Europeans - the reason why she's taken on the battle against bailing out the Euro: she has no intentions of losing her political majority. Indeed, a majority of Germans (some 60%) see no reason why they should bailout Greece or anybody for that matter - forgetting that all these Southern Europeans they despise are major markets (correction here: some German insustrialists do know this and are not all that happy with Merkel). Consider the spread of Germany over Europe. Ten million Germans go to Spain every year for their vacation. German Deutsche Telekom controls the Greek telephone company and German Fraport has acquired 55% of Athens airport.Over 1,400 German enterprises are present on the Italian market, selling for a total €73 billion. Germany holds €123,5 billion of the French public debt.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea: European economies are deeply interlinked. The Euro is just a reflection of that inter-linkage - no, not a reflection, it's more than that. It makes exchange and trade easier, faster and less costly. Just like the American dollar links big, rich states like Texas or California with small, poor states like West Virginia or Mississippi. Which is why the German idea that the Euro was a non starter because it linked countries as diverse as Germany and Greece is plain wrong. Yet some important German intellectuals like the writer and poet Hans Magnus Enzensberger hold just that view! How can they?

It is astonishing how ignorant people are when it comes to economics. And that ignorance is reflected in the politicians they elect. Look more closely at Merkel, here's another amazing photo (still from IL Magazine):

She looks so young, doesn't she? She looks just like an East German University student! But she was actually much older on that picture, already 38. It was taken in May 1992, some 20 years ago, when she had just been appointed by Helmut Kohl as his Minister for Women and Youth. Note the somber, serious look: there's the shadow of the Soviet Empire on that face - East German bureaucratic Kultur. There's also a hint of Lutheran austerity. Her father was a Lutheran minister, and no doubt her mother who taught Latin was a very serious person too.

But look closely at her eyes:

Do you see any light in them? Nothing? Grim determination, yes. Imagination? Mmmm, no comment. It should come as no surprise that she studied (and majored) in physical chemistry...numbers, formulas, no knowledge of human nature or history. Not exactly the best preparation to understand economics...

Have Angela Merkel's eyes improved with time? Let's take a look at them up close (still using the IL Magazine cover image):

Bright blue! Her eyes look more vivacious, don't they? But look again: this photo was very carefully taken, with two lights on the left and right of her face, to give it balance. The lights reflect in the eyes - two bright spots on the right and left of the pupil - thus ensuring that special brilliance. But if you move down to the mouth, you see she's not smiling:

There's a grim set to her lips and small wonder. Even her best friends misbehave, like the President of Germany, Christian Wulff, engulfed in a corruption scandal. No, the message is clear. Toe the line, kiddies, behave! Your government budget is like your household budget: it has to balance out, for the individual: every month, for the government: every year!

I've written elsewhere that the two kinds of budget are not identical, far from it. The public budget belongs to a community not a single individual family and it has to be balanced over time, not every year. When I say "over time", I mean the medium to long term, at least 10 years. Anything else makes no sense at all.

Not so for the European Beer Party. It has embraced the German ideology of balanced budgets and taken Greece as an emblematic example of immoral profligacy and corrupt government practices based on clientelism and privilege. Austerity is not just the Beer Party's key slogan. It is a comprehensive set of measures to balance budgets and use as a bludgeon to whip not only Greece but all wayward Euro-zone members and force them to toe the line of fiscal discipline.

The most recent and biggest Beer Party victory came when 24 EU members at the last Euro Summit agreed to write the principle of balanced budgets into their constitution (the UK is famously among those who have opted out).

The Beer Party is playing a tough game: last Sunday (February 12), while the street was up in arms, the Greek Parliament voted austerity measures at the behest of the European Union, IMF and European Central Bank. The Greeks were told that if they didn't vote, they wouldn't get their €130billion bailout in time to avoid default and that the European Finance Ministers would hold a meeting Wednesday (February 15) to decide on it.

Wednesday came and went and no decisions. Now the Greeks are told that a decision would come at the next Eurogroup meeting on Monday February 20... Maybe so, maybe not. This is disgusting brinkmanship at the expense of Greece whose economy has shrunk since the crisis started by some 15% and whose unemployment rate has shot up steadily, now hovering around 20% and twice that level for the young. Indeed, young Greeks are trying to flee Greece and find jobs abroad if they can...

In times of recession and economic contraction, austerity is a recipe for disaster. In Greece's case, the numbers are now in to prove it: as the economy contracts, tax revenues are down and the deficit grows bigger. At this rate, the debt problem will never be solved. Incidentally, things aren't going much better for Ireland or Portugal...

What's needed is economic growth: without measures to restore growth, the spiral can only accelerate down. Fortunately there's one politician in Europe who keeps saying that, and it's Italy's Prime Minister Monti. He's the only one who makes sense against Merkel's austerity obsession - but then he's not a politician, he's an economist and a technocrat...

This said, there's little doubt that Southern Europe is paying the price of wanting to have its cake and eat it too. Tax evasion and the "submerged economy" are so large that there's not a chance to ever balance the budget without cutting into the practices of bloating the bureaucracy to satisfy nepotism, of padding public pension funds, multiplying fake invalidity payments, handing out free medecines that are then traded for a profit etc etc Personally, I would give priority to fighting tax evasion and forcing businessmen out of the submerged economy rather than slap on higher indirect taxes on everybody (which give additional incentives to take refuge in the submerged economy). And I would give priority to reforming the bureaucratic apparatus and welfare system, to weed out the more obvious cases of systematic corruption and theft.

So Merkel is not totally wrong. And her insistence on austerity might really help put the European House in order. Let's just hope that she'll relent and allow for Euro-salvaging measures like quantitative easing before the European House collapses...Also because if Europe collapses, there's a real danger of contagion, and America could plunge back into recession.

Hey, we're all in this together!

Rome under the Snow, Part II: The Real Story Behind the Polemics

noreply@blogger.com (Claude Nougat) — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 19:51:00 +0000

Snow storms hit Rome yesterday, February 11th, but polemics raged all week. Here's the snow storm hitting my street:

And here's how Villa Volkonsky, the residence of the British Ambassador in Rome, looked hidden behind a double curtain of trees and snow:

Yet, more than the snow, the talk on Italian television and the media was not the snow but polemics surrounding the emergency.

Here's the story behind the polemics.

It's a fact (as I documented in my previous post) that the snow emergency last week caught the city totally unprepared. The images of Rome waking up the following morning under the snow were beautiful, but the beauty couldn't hide the fury of Roman citizens. They had been caught in traffic the night before during a home rush hour that in some cases lasted...eight hours! The next day they were stuck at home, public transport had broken down, even the metro was inaccessible and the supermarkets were empty. No milk, fruits, vegetables or fruit. Unthinkable!

Whose fault was it? How could a modern metropolis of three million inhabitants be caught unprepared?

All eyes accusingly turned to the the Mayor of Rome, Gianni Alemanno:

Image via Wikipedia

He should have warned the citizenry! He should have called the army in, he should have done something! Yet that first night, as the snowfall intensified all he had done was limiting himself to issue a warning that snow tires or chains were obligatory. The next morning, when 50 cm of snow had covered Rome, there was no one to shovel the snow, no means to clear the streets. In the afternoon, only a handful of people were used to clear the access to the football stadium, while the rest of the city remained paralyzed.

The Mayor of course had a ready rebuttal: it was the fault of the "Protezione Civile" - that's the Italian state agency that is supposed to be responsible for the protection of citizens and organizing emergency aid in cases of natural disasters. The Protezione Civile, created 30 years ago, has earned high marks handling Italian natural disasters, most recently during the earthquake that hit Aquila in 2009, the deadliest earthquake since the Irpinia one in 1980. It left over 300 dead, 65,000 people were made homeless and thousands of buildings in several medieval towns, in particular the Aquila, were damaged .

So Alemanno passed the bucket and accused the Protezione Civile. A lot of Romans did not appreciate. The Protezione had done its duty: it had given ample warning of the impending disaster. It was up to the Mayor to take the necessary measures.

Say that again? Wasn't preventing disasters and organizing emergency aid the job of the Protezione Civile? Wasn't that what it was supposed to do, what it had been created for?

Apparently not. Following the Aquila episode, the Protezione Civile's mandate had been reduced from organizing and providing aid to merely coordinating it. And as anyone who's been involved in emergency aid knows (I have been, I know - in my work for FAO, I travelled to Kosovo, Ethiopia and Eritrea), with coordination you don't get very far in an emergency. To do things you need means, and you need them fast.

But the funds and power to obtain means had been taken away from the Protezione Civile. It was now up to mayors and local authorities to obtain funds and means - and if the town was too small, or like Rome lacked funds (too much spent on public concerts rather than on serious stuff), then there was only one way out: seek help from the Ministry of Interior.

Imagine that, having to go through a long-winded bureaucratic procedure to obtain the means to address an emergency!

That means you wait two, three days or more before you can get any help. Result: not only Rome suffered (but fortunately for Romans it turned out to be a minor inconvenience), but people outside Rome suffered more, especially those living in small towns and villages in the mountains.

Imagine, numerous villages around Italy, especially in the Abruzzi and in Basilicata, found themselves totally isolated for days - up to 5 days and more... going without electricity and water! And in sub-zero temperatures! And with food reserves growing scarce!

That, as Guido Bertolaso said on his blog, is unacceptable for a modern, advanced democracy. Bertolaso? He's the previous head of the Protezione Civile (from 2001 to 2010), now retired - he was forcefully removed from his job, more on that in a minute.

So the polemics swelled and Alemanno, the Mayor of Rome, pulled his act together and when a warning came that a second snowfall would hit Rome by Friday 10th, he was ready. Salt and sand bags had been brought, shovels distributed, trucks and other means mobilized, as necessary.

Indeed, on Saturday morning, I woke up to the sound of shovels raking the streets. Here are the men in orange suits, armed in shovels, in front of the British Embassy:

Yes, not working very hard. Five minutes later, they were leaving, shovels on their shoulders:

They were right of course, the snow was already melting. I thought I'd join in the effort and took the shovel the city had given us after the first snowfall:

I never thought I'd be shoveling snow in Rome one day! But if you look closely at the photo, you'll see there was no real need for it anymore. Indeed, a few minutes later, this is how the Church of San Giovanni looked, splendid under the (customary) Roman sun, with only wet streets as a reminder of what had happened:

Back to normal? No, the polemic was raging and I wanted to know what was the real story behind it. I asked around and dug into recent history.

This is what I found.

It all began after the Aquila earthquake. A nasty polemic developed around Bertolaso who was at the time the head of the Protezione Civile and considered a hero by many. Berlusconi, then Prime Minister, had asked him to move the G20 meeting, originally intended to take place in La Maddalena to Aquila in July 2009 - a foolish idea considering the region had just been struck by an earthquake and the priority should have been on reconstruction and giving homes to displaced people. But Berlusconi wanted to show the world what a brilliant manager he was. And he counted on Bertolaso's exceptional organizational skills.

But something went wrong. Maybe hubris, maybe the lax approach that was a mark of Berlusconi's management style, maybe irresistible temptations, maybe the little time available before the G20 meeting, who knows - no matter the reason, the fact is that Bertolaso ended up being accused of squandering state funds on dubious contractors.

The scandal at the time was enormous. For many, it looked like a national hero was unfairly under attack. But since there were growing proofs of wrongdoing, Tremonti, then Finance Minister and a moral purist, took a major decision: he presented to Parliament a law decree (the "Multiproroghe") that, among other things, was designed to take away from the Protezione Civile any funds or power for implementing emergency aid and left it with only an ill-defined general "coordination" role.

The law was passed in February 2011 and Bertolaso went home (actually he had left before).

With the present snow emergency, this law decree caused a mess: nobody knew who was supposed to do what, and with whose funds. Many people were left with the impression that the Protezione Civile was still the one in authority, when it no longer was. That had been clearly the misconception the Mayor of Rome had labored under - him and probably many others.

To put an end to the mess, on 8 February, the Monti government published a decree (here's the link) that clearly spells out who does what at every level of government: regional, provincial and local and this at the behest of the Protezione Civile.

So is the Protezione Civile back in power? Not quite: the decree only refers to the "exceptional weather adversity of February 2012". So what will happen with the next emergency, say next month or a year from now?

Your guess is as good as mine...

Bertolaso - when he was still running the show (Image via Wikipedia)

1% against 99%: the Real Story behind the Euro Crisis

noreply@blogger.com (Claude Nougat) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 10:51:00 +0000

The Euro crisis, the move to austerity measures and budget deficit reduction, the disregard for policies to stimulate growth can all be traced back to the actions of one single group: the one percent.

That famous one percent from the 1% vs. 99% formula the Occupy Wall Street movement has brought up to the front of the scene.The focus on social inequality was no doubt Occupy Wall Street's major contribution to the debate on how to solve the Great Recession that started in 2008 and is still not over in spite of some recent improvements in the US. Plus the situation in Greece is rapidly deteriorating: it looks like default by March 20, probable exit from the Euro and then all bets are open: will the Euro collapse? I don't think so, but the situation is dire. Labor reform is at the centre of the debate, and it's not a question of job creation but of belt-tightening: fewer jobs, cuts in salaries. Ask the Greek what they think!

Massive unemployment is still with us on both sides of the Atlantic. I know, Americans have just received some good news about their unemployment rate but the truth is that nobody expects America to reach full-employment before...2019! And unemployment is worse among the young, reaching peaks of 50% in places like Spain, Greece or Southern Italy and it's pretty bad in several American States too. Perhaps the most surprising is that unemployment also affects the college-educated...our modern society produces technical marvels but cannot solve the problem of unemployment.

Unemployment is unquestionably the NUMBER ONE problem of our times, yet it's been kicked under the carpet, obfuscated by a misplaced concern for fixing budget deficits - a concern that is turning into an obsession.

We are told all day long by the media that budget deficits are the real problem. A parallel is drawn between state budget and our own as private citizens: if we are able to keep our income in balance with our personal expenditures, as any responsible individual should, the State should be called on to do the same.

It sounds reasonable and virtuous.

Actually, it's idiotic.

A state budget cannot be compared to an individual's budget. It's like comparing a pyramid with a sand castle, a mountain with a mole. One is collective and institutional - it represents the budget of a community (millions of persons) and expenditure planning over time (up to 20 years) - while the other isn't. It's individual and short-term. Each of us balance our budget (or try to do it) on a monthly basis and we don't go beyond our family responsibilities.

Looking at a state budget over the long run - say 20 years - it is obvious that you should balance it over that time period and not try to do it year by year. The Bible talks of cycles of seven years of good and bad times. Business cycles can be shorter or longer, but withing 20 years, you can expect to go through at least a couple of major cycles. That's at least a couple of opportunities to straighten your state budget if it got out of balance.

What do I mean? Simple, the 20 year period gives you a chance - you as a government - to do something constructive about a recession. When business stops investing and retrenches on employment, thus causing a downward spiral in consumption, it's time for you, the government to step in. You spend money on infrastructure, even digging useless holes as Keynes once famously suggested : it's better than doing nothing, because you'll maintain jobs and consumption level in spite of and in the face of the retreat in private business activities.

If you do nothing (as Republicans and British conservatives of the Osborne ilk would have it), business confidence won't be restored: as consumption winds down, businesses see their markets vanish. They are not crazy, they are certainly not going to start hiring in times of disappearing markets!

When times get better, when business is investing and hiring, profits and tax revenues are rising. That's when you start balancing your budget. You should never do it - much less think of it - in times of recession.

Yet, even though our Great Recession isn't over and indeed threatens a "double dip" in Europe, austerity measures, fiscal discipline and the virtue of balanced budgets continue to be blithely promoted by politicians who don't understand anything about economics, starting with Angela Merkel and Sarkozy and outside of the Euro-zone, Cameron in the UK and the Republicans (especially the Tea Party) in the US.

All these austerity policies completely disregard the knowledge accumulated by the science of economics over time. What is most disturbing is the rejection of Keynes historically-proved solution to combat depression. Somebody has to make the economic machine turn over: if the private sector won't, the public sector must kick in. It took the massive expenditures of World War II on military production to lift the US out of the Great Depression.

What war will be needed to lift Europe out of the Great Recession?

Italy's prime minister Monti stands out as an exception among European politicians when he keeps harping that we need to focus on reviving economic growth. He's too good an economist not to know that austerity discourages consumption, hence business investment, thus bringing the whole economic machine to a grinding halt...

So how come so much nonsense is spread around in the media about the recession and means to get out of it?

First, this kind of "media noise" - fed by the systematic downgrading of sovereign debt by the American credit rating agencies - provides speculators, i.e the 1%, with the perfect opportunity to make loads of money. The rating agencies are not entirely innocent: they are private and cater to the interests of their primary clients, big banks, hedge funds and other speculators.

The 1% bets against the Euro and walks away with millions in profit.

Anyone who's got cash these days would be foolish to invest in the real economy beset by unemployment and weak consumption. So whatever extra funds are sloshing about - and there are a lot thanks to the US Federal Reserve policy of "quantitative easing" (read: printing dollars) - they all go into playing exquisitely 1% games on Wall Street, betting against sovereign debts. The game's been lucrative and it has been going on for quite some time now: the first one that got hit was Dubai, remember? That was almost three years ago.

At this point in time not a single one percenter is interested in the real economy. What business can give you similar returns to Wall Street? None! The financial world has overshadowed Main Street, and the 99% is sitting out in the cold.

Second point, no financial speculator has ever made money out of solving the unemployment problem. That's a boring, difficult problem. A real life problem for Main Street. But if the 1% says the government can't help by spending money on job creation because budget deficits are sinful and hurtful for future generations, well...It only means that recessions will be longer and deeper than they were in the past.

All we've learned from our Great Depression experience has been forgotten!

Yet unemployment is here, it hurts and it continues to hurt. Everywhere, on both sides of the Atlantic pond. A this point in the debate, no one knows quite what to do with it. There's a general feeling it has something to do with technological advances and globalization.

Recently the New York Times posted a fantastic graphic video, "the iPhone economy", showing how Apple has grown to be as big as GM but has only created one tenth of the number of jobs - and most of them in Asia...The job multiplier is very high in manufacturing and very low in services: auto jobs add 5 times as many jobs to the overall economy, while the multiplier for, say, hospital jobs is around 1.7! Take a look at the video, it lasts just 4 minutes and vividly explains why our economic problems are so hard to solve.

As it says, "we've become a nation in which people have fewer chances to climb into the middle class". Fewer chances? Actually, for the young, the chances are nearly none! The middle class is evaporating, everyone is into the 99%! Why? Because jobs in manufacturing have disappeared, that's why! You're either a skilled engineer or techie hired by Apple at high salaries, or forget it...

What is needed fast is a good discussion about how to solve unemployment and not a pointless discussion about deficit reduction.

Solutions? I've blogged about them several times (click here, here and here), obviously preaching to a desert.

People prefer to talk about budget deficits: that's a simple problem, right? The left column must equal the right column. If you try to say that this balancing act doesn't need to be continuous, that it can be done on and off over time, you're accused of selling off the future of your children. Goodness, why? Are you afraid the technocrats in charge of the budget are going to knife you and your children in the back? But the technocrats have children too...

Bottom line, if we, the 99%, were better aware of the ins and outs of the issue, there would be no problem. We wouldn't fall for the 1% self-serving arguments or political discourse aimed at scaring us.

If our politicians learned a little more about technical issues, it wouldn't hurt. Instead, they merely echo the opinions of the 1% - that was especially obvious at the Davos meeting: the WEF is a 1% event if there ever was one!

We might at last have an enlightened democratic government...But I'm afraid I'm daydreaming. We keep electing politicians for all the wrong reasons: because they have a nice smile on TV, they have a warm handshake, they speak well and easily about anything including things they know nothing about. But then, we don't know how well they've been primed. And if they're rich, or supported by rich friends - read the 1% - then it becomes easy: you buy your looks, your speeches, your opinions from the 1%.

Help! Is there an independent politician anywhere?

PS. In case you're wondering, yes, I did that caricature of 1% basking in the sun while the 99% sit under the rain...

Rome under the Snow: What it's Really Like!

noreply@blogger.com (Claude Nougat) — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 17:24:00 +0000

The last time it snowed in Rome was back in 1986! So Romans are unprepared, and what happened is what I want to show you here. No photos of the Colosseum or St Peter's under the snow, I'm sure you've seen them on TV. What you're getting is an insider's view!

It all started around 1 pm Friday February 3rd. Looking out the window of my living room, this is what I saw:

Giuseppe (my husband) and I wanted to go to a museum - forget it! We decided to stay home and console ourselves with good food:

Yes, for those of you who think I'm a die-hard beer drinker (because of my post on beer-drinking in Rome), you're in for a surprise! I love wine and this was a fantastic bottle - the last one in our cellar: a Brunello di Montalcino 1981. Yes, that's not a typo... ok, we drank it because it was so old: it needed drinking before going off (actually it was perfect). We had it with a little foie-gras followed by two scrumptious Italian cheeses: an aged Gorgonzola and a moist Taleggio. And with that, a perfect pear:

There's an old saying in Italy: "al contadino non far sapere quant'è buono il formaggio con le pere" (roughly: "don't tell peasants how well cheese goes with pears"). To me, it smacks of a historical example of the 1% showing disdain for the 99%!

By 3 pm, it began snowing real hard:

We heard on TV that people going home that night had been blocked for hours - up to 8 hours on the beltway ("raccordo annulare") circling Rome. Imagine, 8 hours trapped in your car! Many are said to have walked away, abandoning their car and creating a yet bigger traffic jam. That event actually marked the beginning of a wave of protests against the authorities, in particular the Mayor for not having listened to weather forecasts and not heeded the warnings issued by the "Protezione Civile" (the Italian State Agency for Emergency Aid/Protection of Civilians).

That night, that's how our street looked like as we went to bed:

Next morning, our geraniums were buried under some 50 cm of snow and Rome looked like it had moved to Finland:

I ran down to the street and this is what I discovered:

Yes, it was already 11 am, and there had been no attempt to clear the street. No salt, no sand, no shovels, nothing. Some people tried (uselessly) to free their cars:

Motorcycles? Forget them! Here's one girl busy recording with her camera what must be her scooter. Nice color lady!

When I got to Piazza San Giovanni, people stood there waiting for a bus that wasn't coming (they said they'd been there for 45 minutes) and the taxi stand - usually filled with a dozen cabs - was empty except for one daredevil:

He told me he had wrapped a "sock" around his front tires - it's that yellow stuff:

He said it was easy to put on, that it gripped the road pretty well as long as the snow didn't turn to slush. If it did (and now it certainly looked like it would as the day wore on and temperatures went up), it would become ineffective as the slush insinuated itself in the "sock". He assured me he planned to drive very very slowly...

Walking further into Piazza San Giovanni, I was taken by the beauty:

Note that most people walked around in ski outfits. I only saw one lady in a fur coat...And of course snowmen were made left and right, including this one which shows that in Italy, art is never far away:

The young man kneeling behind is (I presume) the artist. And here's a truly spectacular view of the old Roman walls - first built by the ancient Romans and expanded through the Middle Ages:

Walking back home, I noticed the milk truck in front of our neighborhood supermarket:

It got there three hours late! As did the bread. And when I walked in, I discovered empty shelves: no meat, no milk, no eggs. People were assaulting the "gastronomia" counter where they sell select hams, cheese, pasta sauces and the like:

It felt like World War III. Everyone was buying huge amounts, acting as if no truck would ever reach Rome again. Of course, the truck drivers strike last week had already put everyone on edge. And the media later reported that dozens of villages in the mountains were cut off. Actually tens of thousands of people in Italy are going without electricity and water, sometimes up to three days...So Romans are (as always) rather privileged people...

But there's little doubt that the city authorities did nothing to clear up the streets...except for distributing free shovels to the citizens, expecting them to do the work themselves! Here's a neighbor who got one of those plastic shovels, proudly showing off:

And then - this being Italy - he is happy like a kid playing with it, throwing snow at his friends:

Not too much clearing of the sidewalks (though the next day he told me he had helped free several cars)...We had a late lunch and once again resorted to our favorite defense strategy: good food. This time it was sautéed shrimp in a white wine sauce with black olives and cherry tomatoes (if you'd like to have the recipe, click here):

By 3 pm, because this is Rome, the sun was back shining again on the trees in front of our windows:

Emergency over? No, the media warned us that temperatures would drop and we could expect ice. The next morning, Sunday 5 February, some snow had melted away, but much remained and all very icy and slippery:

This guy (holding the yellow shovel and walking away) tried to clear the sidewalk but it was iced over and hard and he gave up before finishing the job.

When I walked in the supermarket to get some bread and potatoes, I was in for a big surprise:

Empty shelves, worse than the day before! No fruits and vegetables, no bread, no milk, no water, nothing. The media are reassuring: trucks should reach Rome by Monday - the only people in trouble (as always) are those in the mountains, without road access, electricity or water...

Meantime, the streets around us continued to be covered with snow and ice with no sign of any help coming from the city authorities. And small wonder: on the 12 o'clock news, I heard a special team of 400 people had been sent out with heavy equipment to clear the football stadium and area around it because of the big Roma-Inter match coming up in the afternoon.

In Italy, your best bet is to be a soccer fan!

For more pictures, go to my Picasa Album: click here.

I've just created a QuickQuiz - 5 Questions About Heredity

noreply@blogger.com (Claude Nougat) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 10:08:00 +0000

Here's the link to a QuickQuiz - 5 Questions About Heredity

Click it and play this QuickQuiz now and test your knowledge!The link takes you to Facebook but if you don't want to log in there, click the link on the game box here in the right top corner. It'll take you directly to the quiz which is on the www.fReado.com site with lots of giveaways, including free books, a Kindle and more.

The quiz will make you discover that some very famous people were impacted by genetic inheritance, perhaps some you never suspected like Jane Fonda or Queen Victoria.

If you're wondering why I picked heredity as a subject for the quiz, that's easy! It's something I've always been fascinated with: the issue of nature vs. nurture. Are we born as a clean slate and therefore become the product of our education and experience (nurture) or have we inherited family traits that determine who we are and how we act (nature)?

Anyone who's read my Fear of the Past Trilogy knows that's what the book is really about: the weight of heredity and whether one can shake it off and become free from the past.

We all have seen our parents or grandparents in our children. Don't you wonder sometimes who you really look like? If you look like someone in your family who was a happy, successful person, good for you! But suppose you realize you look like a family member who notoriously messed up his life, who had a tendency to love the wrong woman or sink in depression and alcoholism...or worse, committed suicide?

How would you feel then? In Fear of the Past, Tony Bellomo, a young Italo-American suffering from burnout undertakes a unique journey into self discovery: he falls in a Time Trap in Sicily (his deceased father's home) and meets the ghosts of his ancestors waiting for Judgment Day. You'd think this is a marvelous opportunity for Tony to learn more about which forebears he looks like and discover who he really is. Most of us can't go back 900 years like Tony... But this very knowledge will torment Tony in the worst possible way.

Here's the place where he found the ghosts of his ancestors roaming about: the Circolo di Conversazione, a "conversation club". It actually exists in Ragusa (but I've set it in Syracuse instead for reasons apparent to anyone reading the book). Such clubs existed all over Sicily in the 19th century; the Ragusa club is the one that inspired me to write the book...

Here it is from the outside, just down from the famous St. George Church in the centre of old Ragusa:

And inside:

With red velvet curtains, gilded mirrors and chandeliers, it's a perfect place for ghosts and a marvelous opportunity for Tony to learn about himself... but a scary one. He discovers he shares everything - both looks and emotions - with a certain Francis Leckie, an English adventurer who settled in Sicily in the 1800s (he really did exist, the town of Floridia has a street with his name).

Francis Leckie was an attractive dare-devil and an innovative entrepreneur, but alas he failed in his life: he went bankrupt and the woman he loved, the beautiful Duchess of Floridia, left him for another...

When Tony meets the Duchess (a real historical character too) she mistakes him at first for her English lover since they look so much alike. Can love work between them?

But the story unfolds on another, deeper level. Tony worries that his resemblance to the Englishman marks him out as a failure. Can he avoid making the same mistakes?

The real question is: can Tony play the cards heredity has bestowed on him in a different way? Or is he condemned to repeat the mistakes of the past?

Do you know anyone who's the prisoner of his family heredity? Are we all condemned to repeat the past or is there a way to escape it? Tony, by the last page of the last book has found his way...Find out how he did it and be prepared for surprises: this novel takes you to many unpredictable places and situations!

Available as ebooks:
Book 1 of Fear of the Past trilogy at:

Italian Design's Best Kept Secret: How the Old Helps the New

noreply@blogger.com (Claude Nougat) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:39:00 +0000

On a recent Sunday evening I was given an unusual insight in what makes Italian design so successful. It happened at the fair for young Italian designers, the A.I.Fair (it stands for Artisanal Intelligence) held on 29 January in Emperor Hadrian's Temple in the suggestive Piazza di Pietra in old Rome.

A eureka moment!

But I didn't know that when I got there with my husband around 7 pm. It was a beautiful night, with a young moon in the clear sky and I felt relaxed and romantic. And mildly curious. Here's the Temple:

Majestic! And here's the entrance, hidden among the ancient columns:

Once in, we were met by a noisy and colorful crowd, with a big video screen at one end of the vast hall:

Lots of stands manned by young people, all showing the most eclectic and inventive array of design and fashion products, ranging from weird hats:

to a variety of rings:

necklaces:

shoes:

Hummm, a bit heavy, those heels...and when I climbed up to the mezzanine that girds the big hall, I discovered amazing dresses like this one:

Later I was told that these were the original dresses used in Piero Tosi's film "Barbarella" that got 5 Oscar nominations. These dresses are usually not shown to the public, so that was a rare occasion. Then I came across this one:

Wondering whether this particular one was meant for a one-breast Amazon, I walked over to the balustrade and took a shot of the hall seen from above:

Here you can really appreciate how the "old helps the young": this country has amazing architectural remnants of its long and glorious history that can be used to showcase the work of innovative, young designers. No doubt they're good and inventive, but this kind of environment really helps to set their work off! Old Hadrian called on to support the inventiveness of young Romans...The Temple allure makes the design ideas look elegant and trendy, even if some of them probably aren't.

It's quite a trick to pull off and no doubt one of the elements that help explain the success of Italian design worldwide. Yes, it is one of Italian design's best kept secret: how they are able to exploit the old to the benefit of the new. And of course, how they are inspired by the past to look to the future and invent news ways to do old things.

In one corner of the hall, I came across this surprising stand that confirmed my insight. Here it is:

Set between two small columns, a big "C" on a black background stands out - the trademark for Archivio Cicconi, a collection of over 7 million photographs spanning the whole of the 20th century. It is reminiscent of Gucci's double "G" but much starker in its simplicity. Next two it are two of the products one young and inspired artist has ingeniously derived from the old photographs, with a process that was in use at the end of the 19th century.

Here's the artist, Edoardo Cicconi:

He explained to us that since these photos are reproduced with a handmade process, no two photos are ever alike, thus ensuring that it is an unrepeatable artwork. And they can be made any size, even big enough to cover a whole wall in your living room!

Here is one, derived from a photograph of models in 1948:

And here's the bizarre zeppelin floating above Piazza Venezia, looking surprisingly ominous:

And here's the most extraordinary of the three - a procession of nuns walking through Rome in 1950, like a black pond filled with white balls:

And here's a close up of the material on which the photographs are printed - 100% cotton and you can clearly see the brush work that leaks beyond the edge of the photo:

There were also other interesting things on the Cicconi Archives stand, like this old camera:

There were piles of their new catalogue - here's the cover:

Gregory Peck in 1959 - on the terrace of the Hassler Hotel, with St Peter's in the background. Inside, lots of American celebrities - including this one of Louis Armstrong and his wife, vacationing in Rome:

And here's Pino er Pasticciere (Pino the Pastry chef) serenading a very young Ursula Andress:

We're in 1958...I met Pino at a party many years later (he came to our house in 1986) and he still had a remarkable voice and oodles of charm.

By 8 pm, the fair closed and we were out on the streets hunting for a restaurant. Actually, there were many, and since the temperature was so mild - in spite of this being January - many people were dining outdoors:

I prefer indoors in winter, no matter what. So we walked on and came to the Pantheon:

Turning the corner, on Via del Seminario, we came to this old restaurant (established in 1946) that my husband knew from his Dolce Vita days (!):

He told me their pizzas were excellent, and so they were:

Crisp and tasty - that stuff on the left side of the pizza are zucchini flowers...What struck me though was the fact that this restaurant is still in the hands of the same family. Now the third generation, and still fondly looking after their clients:

The family touch...that's what makes the difference!

Italy in Revolt: First Protest against Monti's Government... a Flop!

noreply@blogger.com (Claude Nougat) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:31:00 +0000

Italy in revolt! Today, January 27 2012, starting at 12:30 pm, people converged on Piazza San Giovanni in Rome to protest against Monti's package of measures to fix the debt problem and stimulate the economy. The police, expecting the worst, had cordoned off the streets and a helicopter surveyed the scene:

Here the protesters march down the Viale Carlo Felice, coming from Piazza della Repubblica where they had convened earlier this morning:

Most of them are middle-aged, some are even old and there's only one group of young people, about fifty of them, walking behind a sign which says "Students and Workers United - General Strike".

Note the hammer and sickle: long time, no see!

Actually there were very few such reminders of Communism, although I did note some leftovers from radical parties, weakily waiving antiquated flags, and a couple of young TAV protesters (TAV is the high speed train that is supposed to link Italy to France and has roused the ire of environmentalists ). Perhaps they were few because at present, some 25 TAV protesters are in prison, after the violent demonstrations last summer that left hundreds wounded.

By one pm, the protesters had gathered in the Piazza and gleefully let off some smoke bombs, just to add a little ambience:

Looks threatening but it's only pink smoke!

Here they are listening to their union leaders (these were mostly from the public transport system unions - local trains, buses and subways are stopped today for a 24 hour strike - a nuisance of course, but everyone's used to these strikes that conveniently start after 8.30 am so people can get to work and are suspended between 5 and 8 pm so people can go back home):

As you can see, there are very few people...And if you look at the piazza in the other direction, that's what you see:

I'm not kidding you: the piazza was empty!

This protest was a total flop - maybe four or five hundred people came, no more. A far cry from the way Piazza San Giovanni had been filled to the brim some two years ago when there was a mega protest against Berlusconi. You couldn't even edge in your way into the piazza from the side streets!

All told, this was just a pleasant outing on a sunny day, with a couple of t-shirt vendors. Here's one:

And here's the t-shirt I would buy (it reads: "and I pay!"):

Yes, echoes of Occupy Wall Street: it's always the common man - the 99 percent - who ends up paying! By the way, that's a picture of the famous actor Toto, still an icon in Italy (and rightly so).

You know what are the real problems of life in Rome this week? Lack of fruits and vegetables! Because 10 percent (that's right only ten percent) of truck drivers have blocked the roads from vegetable collection points, we are getting no fruits and vegetables from Southern Italy (the area that produces the best tasting stuff!).

So supermarket shelves have looked like this all week:

And like this:

The asparagus you glimpse on the right come from Peru, by air and via Milano. Because we get all the stuff from Milano: Northern Italy hasn't been blocked.

A pity, because the tomatoes, eggplants and other veggies all come from Spain that unfortunately is very good at using modern agricultural techniques and packaging/distribution methods and very bad at producing tasty produce: tomatoes and eggplants are all precisely the same size and color and utterly tasteless. Actually, when you eat them, you can't tell the difference between a tomato and an eggplant!

Apart from the unpleasantness of being unable to locate good produce, what makes me really angry is that a minority of truck drivers can manage to block half a country - some twenty five million people - and curtail our rights as consumers to get the food we are used to eating.

All because they have to pay a little more tax and participate in salvaging the Italian economy. Haven't they got any sense of civic responsibility? What kind of people are these, always thinking of making more and more money? Because I'm quite certain that these truck drivers make a nice, steady income. They just won't admit to it, that's all. And nobody is investigating their real income, neither journalists nor the Finance Police (Guardia di Finanza - true, sometimes they do check on people, but it's all rather sporadic). Truck drivers are part of the privileged class (along with restaurant and bar owners) that never pay the taxes they really owe the government.

This said, the problem in Italy is that the ultra rich don't pay either. Landowners, doctors, lawyers, accountants etc - nobody pays the taxes owed.

Tax evasion is so universal that it is the real disease Italy is suffering from.

If the one percent gave the good example of paying the taxes it owes - the way it does in Northern Europe, in Norway, in Germany etc - then maybe the 99 percent (and among them the restaurant owners, the taxi drivers and trucksters who constitute niches of privilege) would follow suit...And Italy would at last function as a modern state.

The American Credit Rating Agencies are in Trouble in Italy: is it the Beginning of the End?

noreply@blogger.com (Claude Nougat) — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 19:36:00 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

The American credit rating agencies are often seen as the villains of the financial world, particularly by governments whose debt is downgraded. The credit rating agencies have held hostage the Euro-zone governments, starting first with Greece and moving on steadily through the Euro-zone until France was knocked off its triple A on January 13, together with Italy and a number of other Euro-zone countries, sparing only the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg and of course Germany. But Germany for the first time got a negative outlook to it's Triple A - suggesting that with any downturn in the European economic outlook, even Germany risked its Triple A.

Then on 16 January S&P downgraded the European Bailout Fund (the EFSF - European Financial Stability Facility) because it is backed by downgraded countries, chief among them France...In practice, this does not affect the EFSF lending capacity of €440 million that is in place until the European Stability Mechanism becomes operational in July 2012, but it certainly doesn't help. It has all the look of a quite unnecessary move on the part of S&P.

Europeans are becoming restless and even the German Foreign Affairs Minister, Guido Westerwelle, muttered on his way to Greece that a European Rating Agency should be created. "The time has come for Europe to prove that it can resist credit rating agencies" he told the press.

But the Italians are not waiting for any new agency to be formed. According to the Italian newspaper Repubblica (reported in 20 January edition ), the Procura (Public Prosecutor's Office) of the cities of Trani and Milan launched an investigation on 16 January and the Italian Finance Police - the Guardia di Finanza - struck, raiding the Milan office of Standard & Poor's, taking away computers and email exchanges. In addition, the Consob (the Italian equivalent of the Securities and Exchange Commission) has issued a warning to both agencies, S & P and Moody's, inviting them to "adjust their procedures" as they are "not in line" with European Union guidelines (see news on consob.it site).
Image via Wikipedia

So far it seems that seven persons are under investigation: three analysts from S&P, one from Moody's and three directors from both agencies, all accused of having spread in May, June and July 2011, news that were "not correct and in any case false and tendentious regarding the strength of the Italian economic-financial and banking system". To this was added the "episode" of Friday 13 January: the unexpected bump faced by the Italian bond auction that morning.

In some ways, what happened that day could have become much worse if the markets had not already discounted to a large extent the downgrading of Italy's debt. Nonetheless, the bond auction that morning was not covered by bids to the expected extent, and the infamous "spread" (difference) between the Italian and German bond prices rose once again, reaching the danger zone of 500 base points - and this in spite of the fact that Italy had taken all the required measures to face the Euro crisis and satisfy investors.

This odd behavior found an explanation by 4 pm that day, when rumors widely circulated that France and Italy were about to be downgraded that very evening by S&P. Blame was laid by the Trani Prosecutor at the doorstep of S&P.

Why all the legal fuss? First, because by law, Standard & Poor's is supposed to inform the concerned authorities of its downgrade before anyone else and certainly before the markets, yet somehow the news had spread earlier...

Add to that the fact that the downgrade of Italy was universally perceived as excessive, even wrong in the face of Monti's government efforts and highly praised austerity and growth measures: Italy was downgraded by two steps and not one, from A to BBB+.

Do the Italians have a case against the rating agencies? The agencies, as might be expected, loudly claim their innocence. But the Trani Prosecutor and his office have prepared their case very carefully, pooling expert opinions from respected economists as well as from personalities in the world of finance and banking, including testimonies from ex-Prime Minister and European Commissioner Romano Prodi, Mario Draghi, the new head of the European Central Bank and Giulio Tremonti, the Finance Minister in Berlusconi's last government and Torino University Professor.

So it's their word against the agencie's. Moreover, the numerous linkages between the rating agencies and banks who are their customers (in particular Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley) and investment and hedge funds such as Black Rock, State Street, Capital World Investors, Vanguard, Fidelity etc have become the subject of striking diagrams in Italian newspapers and elsewhere, where the lines cross each other, embedding the agencies in a spider network...

That is probably the most dangerous aspect of this story for credit rating agencies: their unhealthy relationships with the world of banking and investment - their natural customers - are at last revealed to public opinion, voiding their claim of independence and transparency.

What is needed is a truly independent rating agency...As Chakrabortty of the UK Guardian observed (see article below), "the agencies are neither accurate nor merely observers - yet they bully governments around the world and make billions doing so. The obvious solution would be to take this public service into public hands. Let's have a ratings agency run by the UN, funded by pooled contributions from both lenders and borrowers. It should be the only one to have preferential access to data from corporates and countries. Let's make the ratings business a utility rather than a semi-cartel that intimidates elected politicians and rakes in excess profits. It's time to break up the bullying double act."

Strong words...with which I fully agree. Because unfortunately one cannot do without credit rating agencies: any borrower, whether corporate or government, that needs to go to the bond market needs a credit rating report to show investors. It's a necessary function, but it need not be in private hands that twist it to their own advantage...

S&P's World: Green = AAA; Turquoise = AA; Blue = BBB...Image via Wikipedia

Occupy Wall Street? No, Occupy Rome and March to Athens!

noreply@blogger.com (Claude Nougat) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 09:27:00 +0000

Tents have come up by the dozen all over Rome, with posters of protest. Was it another Occupy Wall Street in the making?

On January 14, I decided to take a stroll and find out. I came up to the old walls of Rome at the San Giovanni gate:

Crossing the gate, you arrive upon the vast piazza of San Giovanni, with the Church hiding behind the trees:

Across from it is St. Francis' statue, raising his arms to the sky and...covered with posters and surrounded by tents:

What do the posters say? There were more than I could take in, but the protest messages were quite clear:

Disobey!

Here you have to interpret a little: made in China = slavery, referring no doubt to the low pay and hard wok conditions of Chinese workers. And next to it in Spanish: This is not Woodstock, This is (a fight for) Justice (literally: this is not Woodstock, this is Right).

Far from not having any political ideas, they seem to be boiling over with them (with possibly some not quite "baked"). Here is one of the posters announcing their political activities:

It announces that on Sunday 15 January, they plan on having an assembly on the theme of Work and Social Income followed at 2 pm by a "*Carnival of the System* Creative Action Through the Streets of Rome". To be followed on Monday 16 by a "Meeting on the Situation in Palestine" and a "Proposal to [organize] a March to Palestine". Given the tension in Gaza, I wonder how many will decide to do that...

In case you missed the overall objective, here it is, spread in big letters across St Francis' statue:

Yes, it reads: "[For the] Construction [of a] Better Future". These kids certainly have a clear agenda: overhaul society and make it better. And just in case you didn't get it, here is the place they dedicate to the role of books and ideas:

The two posters in the back make it clear: "Because Books transmit the Revolution to [future] Generations" and "Because Change is Achieved through Culture".

At that point, I wanted to know more about them. I spotted a couple of girls painting posters on the sidewalk and walked up to them:

I approached the girl who's turning our back to us in this picture and asked her what she was doing. A multiple poster, she said. If you look closely at the picture, you'll see she had completed the drawing of a missile and was now working on painting a peace dove. She showed me the sketch she was working from:

The message here needs no translation!

I first started speaking to her in Italian and she shook her head, answering in Spanish. I asked her in that language whether she was coming from Spain and she said she came from France. At that point we both laughed and fell into French (my mother tongue).

She told me there were about 80 of them in the encampment and that they came from everywhere: Australia, Bangladesh, Spain, Peru... Looking at them, anyone can see they come from all over:

She said she had joined them here in Rome on 5 January - and that there was a hard core of some 30 participants that had started from Nice (France) in November. They plan to walk down through Italy all the way to Bari and then cross over on a ferry headed for Greece. They expect to reach Athens by March, stopping along the way in all major towns to express their "indignation" - as they were doing here in Rome during their two week stay, organizing meetings and marches through town, like the one planned for Sunday, from Piazza San Giovanni to Piazza del Popolo.

I asked her whether she was staying with them till Athens but she shook her head, no, she was a design student in a Paris university and had to work and study.

So this is the March of the Indignados to Athens. When they stop on the way they are joined by others like this girl who give them a hand for a few days - thus clarifying to me one of the mysteries of the Occupy Wall Street protest movements. Since they last so long, I thought they included only the unemployed or otherwise disoccupied young. But no, that is not the case. Those who work join them temporarily, swelling their ranks when they stop in big cities and adding fuel to their enthusiasm...And while overwhelmingly young, there are some older people too, like this man on the foreground, busy drawing a poster:

I asked my French friend whether the police had bothered them and she shook her head. Actually people in the neighborhood were nice and supportive,she said. One had even lent them his apartment so they could have warm showers. And food was regularly brought to them every day:

Certainly the mild winter weather in Rome and Athens helps maintain the momentum of such protest movements. I imagine that for the moment, with snow and sleet, there are very few such movements in the States...

Is there any around you?

Post-scriptum: On Sunday January 15, the march across Rome from Piazza San Giovanni to Piazza del Popolo took a wrong turn. A small group (about 50, mostly French and Spanish) went as far as St Peter's and tried to set up a protest encampment, only to be dispersed by the police in riot gear. A couple of people got hurt but the plaza in front of St. Peter's was cleared.

It seems one of the protesters was disguised in a pope's outfit and bore the slogan "indignant heart", a reference to the Spanish Indignados movement. They naively expected support from the Vatican. Instead, Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said that "considering the actions undertaken and the language used, these Indignados evidently wanted to use the piazza in an improper way, not in keeping with the spirit of the place."

It goes to show that some disobediance is ok but you can't win them all!

France and Italy Downgraded by the Credit Rating Agencies: a Plot Against the Euro?

noreply@blogger.com (Claude Nougat) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 23:45:00 +0000

The anger was palpable here in Italy as news of the Standard & Poor's downgrade spread this evening, Friday 13th. Anger was perhaps more muted in France and the French Finance Minister Baroin declared on French TV that he had half-expected it. And that in any case the credit agencies could not dictate French policy and that France would not undergo further austerity measures.

Actually, a lot of people had expected the downgrade and to some extent the markets had probably already digested the news because their reaction was relatively subdued. The other two major agencies, Fitch and Moore's, were expected to follow soon. France lost its triple A rating by one notch and Italy was down two notches to BBB+ with a "negative" outlook. All Euro-zone countries were downgraded except Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxemburg. Mind you Germany maintained its triple A but got a "negative" outlook.

Commentators across the political spectrum in Italy pointed to Prime Minister Monti's courageous package of austerity measures. You could sense the disappointment: after all, big efforts had been made - in the order of €30 billions. The downgrading seemed to overlook the fact that Italy has one of the most solid banking sectors in Europe. For example, Italian banks hold some €750 million of "toxic" Greek bonds as compared with several billions said to be held by banks in France, Germany and the UK. Moreover, Italy presently enjoys a healthy public debt situation, with tax revenues reportedly flowing in at a higher rate than current payments on the debt.

Others pointed to another worrying dimension to the downgrading of the French debt: since France was originally one of the triple A rated Euro-zone governments guaranteeing the future European Financial Stability Fund (EFSF) designed to come in aid of Euro-zone governments in difficulty, its downgrading was seen as a bad omen for the future of the Euro.

How important is this? Frankly, I believe not that much. At this point in time, what the European Central Bank does (or doesn't do) is far more important for the health of the Euro than whatever role the EFSF might be able to play in future. More on this in a moment.

Another bad omen is the breakdown of the Greek government talks with private banks to renegotiate its debt. In practice, this could be interpreted as tantamount to a Greek default. This bit of news was overshadowed by the credit downgrading news, but from a practical point of view it is far more worrying. After all, credit rating agencies' reputation is not exactly golden: these are the same agencies that gave a few years ago a triple A to Enron and to American banks in spite of their subprime mortgage activities...And credit rating agencies get paid by their customers (banks etc) for this type of rating whereas the ratings on a country's sovereign debt are given out free.

One may well wonder about such a business model that is predicated on a rather improbable wall separating the agencies' work on sovereign debt from that on private debt.

By Friday night, a common statement was expected from Brussels but as I write it hasn't come yet. One can expect the Eurogroup Ministers of Finance to express disdain and contest the downgrading. They might even hint at creating a European Credit Rating Agency. Many see a "European" agency as the proper counter move against the "American" agencies.

Apart from the chauvinistic satisfaction it might give some people, I don't believe a European credit agency would serve to change the rules of the game.

First it would need to establish a reputation for independence. If it fails to do so, it would be useless - just as useless as the Chinese credit rating agency is. No one follows what the Chinese agency says because everyone is convinced it is subservient to the Chinese government.

Second, there would be a need to change investment rules for many if not most big institutional investors (pension funds etc). This is the crux of the credit agency problem: a lot of institutional investors are obliged to follow investment rules that include respecting the ratings given by the "big" three agencies. So when Italy loses its A rating and goes into the B class, it can expect that a whole lot of investors that might have bought its bonds in future won't be able to do so anymore.

The solution? For the Euro, there is an urgent need to make investors AND credit rating agencies understand that the Euro is collectively defended and protected. It makes no sense at all to maintain the triple A credit rating for some countries like Germany and lower it for all the other Euro members.

Because if France and Italy go down, you can bet that Germany will too. It may well be the biggest European economy and the healthiest in terms of employment and exports, but France and Italy taken together are much bigger than Germany.

There is no way that Germany can sustain the Euro on its own. Nor for that matter can it get out of the Euro. If Germany tried to get out, leaving aside the cost and logistical mess caused by tearing up the Euro, one can expect the reborn Deutsche Mark to shoot up. It would probably to double the current level of the Euro, effectively killing off all German exports. Whereas, as of now, with a weak Euro with respect to the dollar, it's all to the benefit of German exports.

No, such a mega-scenario is not credible.

The only problem and the real one is and remains Greece. The reason why talks have broken down with the European big banks (French, German etc) said to be holding Greek toxic bonds is simply that they probably...no longer hold these bonds! Rumors have been circulating that they had offloaded their bonds to private hedge funds located in London and elsewhere. So now all those banks look "clean" and the Greek bonds are in private hands somewhere and nobody knows where. But the investors who hold them are savvy types: I'm willing to bet they got them at say around 40% of value (or even less) and expect Greece to pay them at 50% (that's the rate that was reportedly under discussion) or higher. So in a few months they will have made tons of money...while the Greek GNP keeps contracting further and further under the weight of austerity measures.

Is that what Germany wants for its Euro partners?

It is high time that the European political class stop talking about creating new European institutions such as the EFSF and concentrate instead on allowing the one institution that exists, the European Central Bank (ECB), to function as it should. It is incoherent to expect the ECB to fight inflation when the problem is recession and deflation. The Germans should understand this.

The ECB chart does say the Bank is to fight inflation but it also says the Bank is supposed to insure the stability of the Euro. That means, regardless of what the Germans think, that the Bank must defend the Euro with all and every means available to a central bank.

When will the European Central Bank become independent from German diktaats?

Model of New ECB Building to be Completed in 2014

Italy, the Land of Wine is Turning to Beer!

noreply@blogger.com (Claude Nougat) — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 15:08:00 +0000

Beer drinking started growing in Italy fifteen years ago and now it is fast becoming a fad. In that time, over three hundred microbreweries were started. According to a recent study, their number stood at 397 in 2011 and rising. None of them suffered from the 2008 recession.

While fast rising, this is still a small sector: it amounts to a modest 1.5% of total production and sells only in specialized beer pubs and a few restaurants -- and not in any supermarkets like industrial beers.

For example, in Rome, in the old part of town, you can go to a beer pub - the Open Baladin - that serves 40 different craft beers on tap, all of them Italian. They have an on-going "Winter Beer Fest" and I thought I'd try them out for lunch. I started walking from the Isola Tiberina. Here is a view of the island:

Isola Tiberina, Image via Wikipedia

I crossed the bridge on the right of this photo, coming across a tramp with his dogs who was beatifically soaking up the winter sun, he with his four dogs:

After five minutes walking towards Piazza Campo dei Fiori, I came to Via dei Specchi, an old narrow street along which the beer pub is nestled, barely visible on the left:

Here's the entrance to the beer pub:

Rather modest with its brown doors, but inviting. I walked in - it was 1:15 pm - and found a big almost empty room with a wall of beer bottles that looked almost like wine bottles! And across it, a long bar lined up with forty taps to draw craft beers:

I sat in a corner and ordered a scrumptious warm bread sandwich filled with melting Mozzarella di Bufala (the best kind) and smoked ham. Then, following the advice of the serving girl (very nice and helpful), I selected among the 40 beers on tap, "My Antonia". It turned out to be an interesting variation on a pils imperial with 7.5% graduation: strong body, very aromatic, long in the mouth. All beers, regardless of the choice, cost €5, a very reasonable price for a tall glass, (31cl):

Then I had an incredibly good piece of pastry, dark chocolate and nuts, as light as a mousse - a real surprise for a beer place - but that is presumably the Italian touch!

By the time I left, at 2 pm the place was jammed:

Given the late hour for lunch and the way people talked loudly, gesturing with gusto, you could tell there were no tourists here: this was an Italian crowd!

Italians quaffind down beer? Yes, surprising for a country that is culturally devoted to wine, and the biggest wine producer in the world right after France and the first in terms of per capita consumption of wine: 54 liters/year, ahead of France (47 liters) and much more than the US (7 liters).

While most Italian micro brewers copy English and Belgian beers, some of them are quite innovative, using local herbs and spices as well as experimenting with wine mixtures (!). There are reportedly over a thousand different brands of craft beer producted in Italy. I can't tell you how good most of them are, but they are bound to be different and they certainly express a renewed interest in beer.

I say a "renewed" interest because Italians are not new to beer drinking. The Ancient Romans used to drink it and even had their own pub, the "Domus Cervisiae", opened by the Roman governor of Britain.

Beer was drunk in the Florence of Lawrence the Magnificent in the 1400s and regarded as a refined drink. Industrial beer-making flourished in the 19th century, reaching a high point in 1894 with 191 breweries. However, by 1930, there remained only 35, largely as a result of a campaign of taxation aimed at discouraging beer drinking which killed off the smaller breweries.

By 1960, only three groups (Peroni, Forst and Pedavena) remained that accounted for 60% of all beer production. Now, most of these groups have been absorbed by multinationals (Heineken, Peroni Sab Miller and Carlsberg). The remaining industrial Italian breweries, accounting for less than 10 percent are just four: Forst Menabrea, Birra Castello, Tarricone and Theressianer. The rest, some 25%, is imported by Imbev.

While the Italian per capita consumption of beer remains statistically modest (31 liters in 2007) at about half the EU average and well behind world champions like Ireland (155 liters) and Germany (119 liters), it has been steadily rising (it was some 24 liters in 1990) while wine consumption has declined ( from over 60 liters/year in 1990 to some 42 liters now).

The reasons for this rise? The micro breweries of course have played a large role in raising interest. And so have the big industrial breweries, introducing a large variety of beers. Indeed, they consider the Italian market as "mature". And beer festivals are organized just like in Germany, including an Italian Octoberfest that you can enjoy even in the South (in Naples for example).

Of course most of the small breweries are found in Northern Italy but they are now expanding in the South and in the islands, Sicily and especially Sardinia (where per capita beer consumption is the highest in Italy: 60 liter/year). If you come to Italy for a vacation, don't think you need to give up your beer drinking. You can even organize picturesque tours from one brewery to the next in Tyrol and elsewhere (for itineraries and news about beer festivals, check this site).

The Italian enthusiasm for beer has led to some interesting research results showing that beer like wine, if drunk in moderate quantities, can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. That is the claim of one recent study published online in the European Journal of Epidemiology. And it certainly looks like a serious study: funded by the Giovanni Paolo II Foundation (Vatican-related!), and carried out in its laboratories in Campo Basso, Italy. A meta-statistic analysis aggregating the results of recent scientific studies around the world, it pools together the data of 200,000 persons for whom alcoholic drinking habits were associated with cardiovascular disease (see article below). With that much data on hand, who can resist the lure of beer drinking?

Prosit! Or perhaps I should say, Italian-style, salute, to your health!

Lessons Learned in 2011 and What They Can Tell us About 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Claude Nougat) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 13:18:00 +0000

Arab Spring Image by Painted Tapes via Flickr

Events in 2011 taught us some lessons about the fragility of democracy, the limits of nuclear power and the incapacity of the political class to manage a modern state. Let me elaborate a little before drawing conclusions about 2012:

1. The Fragility of Democracry, starting with the Arab Spring and ending with Occupy Wall Street: The Arab Spring was the first major event in 2011 followed by a series of protest movements in Europe and the US (fueled by the "Indignados" in Spain and Occupy Wall Street in the US). The role of the Internet, particularly Facebook and Twitter, was hyped up and seemed to herald a new age for human rights and democratic freedom, particularly in the Middle East that had been singularly bereft of them up to that point. More generally it pointed to an awakening of the middle class around the globe as it realized at last that with unbridled capitalism, an explosion in income inequality had relegated it to the 99 percent. The young failing to find employment, even those with university training, lost all hope of matching their elders' income and maintaining their living standards.

The final results of these protest movements are not in yet, but it is already clear in the Middle East that only two countries so far have "made it": Tunisia and Morocco. Strengthened forms of democratic government have arisen there while in the other countries of the region the process still has to play out, with Yemen still suffering from troubles and Syria apparently sinking in civil war.

In Lybia fresh out of its civil war, it is too soon to tell  but it is obvious that the road to democracy will be long, arduous and uphill. The first priority for any Libyan government will be to disarm the rebels and pacify the country. The next priority will be to find a political consensus between the various ethnic groups and tribes that make up the country, and here too, Sharia may prove a more powerful unifying force than any desire for a liberal Western-style democracy. Too much religion is not good for democracy...

Egypt, the country furthest along in the democratization process after Tunisia, is now threatened by an increase in Islamization and a military unwilling to give up the power it has held for some seventy years. Indeed, Egypt is a particularly worrisome case, as the Muslim Brotherhood has gained some 40% in the on-going election process and the more extremist Salafi movement is up to an astonishing 25%. That means liberal forces have the rest, a very modest 35%, not enough to prevent the establishment of a Sharia-governed state and society.

In the early days of the Arab Spring, much was made of the "Turkish model" as an example of a Muslim country capable of running a full and free democracy. Now no one mentions it anymore and it is probably just as well since even Turkey is experiencing problems: Erdogan's government is pushing towards Islamization (for example the debate around women's head scarves) and keeps a very large number of journalists in prison on trumped up charges.

Protests in the rest of the world have similarly failed in achieving any concrete results. China has moved quickly to quell them.  At the time of writing, protest is washing over Russia where people got angry when the recent elections were visibly skewed to support Putin's United Russia party. But the protest is unlikely to succeed anytime soon as Putin, predictably, reacted negatively, viewing protesters as having "no leaders and no goals" - exactly what critics in the United States have said of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Tangible results so far are nil. Clearly democracy is fragile and difficult to bring about in places where people have been used to dictatorial governments. And let's face it:  democracy is not doing very well even in Europe. Apart from the well-known shortcomings in countries like Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, we are now experiencing the surprising spectacle of Hungary, in the very heart of Europe, slowly but surely moving towards an autocratic system: Victor Orban's government has already muzzled the press and moved to take control of the Hungarian Central Bank, denying it the independence that is essential for a central bank to function properly.

Moreover, the democratic system weakens a country's ability to govern, in particular its foreign policy whenever an election is on the horizon: politicians worry more about scurrying around for votes than about managing the state. In 2012, this is going to be the case for several countries including France but most importantly for the United States, still the prime player among nations. Well, don't expect the US to play much in 2012!

2. The Limits of Nuclear Power: How can we ever forget the Fukushima drama? Many countries drew lessons immediately, prime among them Germany that gave up its nuclear program and turned resolutely to green energies.

But Germany's example hasn't been followed - least of all by France that continues to bet on nuclear power - not surprising given its investment in it (read: Areva). Oddly enough, Japan itself is vacillating and clearly hasn't decided yet on its course of action - though it's likely to continue to cling to nuclear power as the more economic solution. These hesitations are echoed at the ground level in Japan where the villages hit by the tsunami still haven't decided to move uphill and appear to stay put in their original site in spite of the obvious dangers.

The upshot? Nuclear power is going to cost more but it won't fade away in spite of all the dangers...

3. The Incapacity of the Political Class to Manage a Modern State. This is perhaps the most surprising lesson of 2011. For the first time it has become crystal clear to everyone that the political class tends to fall into its political games rather than pay attention to governing the state - admittedly a very difficult proposition for politicians who are generally untrained as managers and are only good at public speaking and shaking hands. The modern state is highly complex and subject to a variety of economic pressures and social challenges - none of which politicians are prepared for. Indeed, they are never voted in for their capacity to manage the state. They get votes for their pleasant look and attractive demeanour.

The case of Belgium that went nearly two years without a government underlines how useless the political class really is. It showed that a modern state can perfectly well be run by its bureaucracy. It really only needs a government to handle foreign affairs - not particularly a pressing issue for Belgium that has its foreign policy embedded in the European Union.

When the Euro crisis took a bad turn for Greece and Italy, both countries ditched their politicians and resorted to technocrats to resolve their problems. Does this mean the technocrats are not democratically legitimate? No, because in each case, these technocratic governments obtained a vote of confidence from their respective parliaments.  How well they will manage the crisis has yet to be seen, but one thing is certain: for the first time, politicians have accepted to let people savvier than themselves run the state. There is little doubt that a failure of Monti in Italy and Papademos in Greece will signal the end of the Euro. If they can't do it, no one can.

There were many other major events in 2011, chief among them the Euro crisis, but I've picked out those who seemed most promising in heralding change.

Will 2012 be the year that democracy and human rights win in the Middle East? That nuclear power is reined in within the limits of prudence and reason? That the political class recognizes its managerial limitations and allows technocrats to be in charge of crisis management?

What's your take? Do you think we will apply the lesson learned in 2012?

A New Website to Guide Readers in e-Book Discovery: Super E-Reads

noreply@blogger.com (Claude Nougat) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 17:47:00 +0000

Super E-Reads, a recently created website to guide readers in e-book discovery, is well worth a visit for readers and authors alike. Needless to say, I'm happy to report that they featured my book Forget the Past, Book One of the Fear of the Past Trilogy, click here to see it.

Leaving aside my book for the moment, you will find the site is easy to navigate: it links to all major e-platforms (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, iBookstore etc) and organizes books by major genres: Romance, Mystery, Thriller, Literary Fiction, Science Fiction and Young Adult. All you have to do to buy a book is to click on the relevant icon and it takes you straight to your favorite e-platform. And of course they have a Facebook page and Newsletter.

In case you're wondering, the image above shows an angle of my studio and the three paintings I did for my book covers, set together on the fireplace to dry out (they're oil on canvas): from left to right, the lion on a red background for Forget the Past, on blue for Reclaim the Present and on yellow for Remember the Future. The colors and the changes in the way the lions look are meant to symbolize what happens in each book but I won't bother you with the details...if you read the books, you'll understand why the lions change looks!

Happy Holidays!

noreply@blogger.com (Claude Nougat) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 16:04:00 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

Happy Holidays to all! And wishing you every success in 2012!

I love this picture: it's a detail from Deesis Mosaic, Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, Turkey.

The East is not as far away from the West as you might think!

Here's to peace on Earth!

My New Book is Out and My Marketing Strategy Stinks!

noreply@blogger.com (Claude Nougat) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 16:28:00 +0000

The Three Cardinal Rules of Book Promotion: All Broken…


oil on wood 60 x 80 by Claude Nougat

My Fear of the Past trilogy is out at last, with the last book, Remember the Future, now available on Amazon and other platforms...It's been nine months of sweat and hard work, as long as giving birth to a baby!

Cause to celebrate? Yes, the baby is born, but no, I’ve broken all the book promotion rules! I feel just like that horse running after a red ball and jumping in the void! When he lands on that staircase, boy, it's going to hurt...

Yet I tried my best to follow all the hallowed marketing rules, but in each case, I didn't quite make it. Consider:

Cardinal Rule no. 1: keep a blog, become an expert in your “niche”. Writers normally blog about what they know: books and publishing. Sure, I do that but I can’t stop there, I’m just too interested in current events in any area – foreign affairs, science, health, cooking, art, travel – to stick to any given topic week in, week out.

Result? My blog looks like a Swiss Cheese, full of holes: a niche for the Euro crisis, another for contemporary art, others for the unemployment issue, the Arab Spring challenges, cooking tips…I can go on and on.

Who likes a blog that’s like a Swiss cheese? I guess you do since you’re reading me and that’s my biggest consolation for not following the rules!

Cardinal Rule no. 2: maintain a strong presence on all social media. I try, really I do try very hard: I’m on Twitter (over 1200 followers and growing) and also on Facebook (check my new Author Page!), Google+ (still need to figure out how to add an author page there), LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Digg, Goodreads, Shelfari, The Reading Room,You Name it.

I've even started writing for Ezine articles as an "expert author". Two articles published so far and the editors have been very nice about it: giving me a star for being in "the limelight" and for being...photogenic! Wow, I never knew I was photogenic! Here's the picture they like:

Great, that's very, very encouraging. But you know what? My life on Internet is eating me up! If it goes on like this much longer, I won't have any time left to write! Help! I like to connect to people, I do, but I want real interaction! How can one do that with so many social networks around? And I’m not even on YouTube and haven’t done a book trailer yet, much less a podcast…

So please, if my blog posts titillate (or annoy you), let me know! If you like my books, do write to me (email address in my books or here on the blog) or post a review wherever you like! I welcome the connection, say what you think!

Cardinal Rule no. 3: hone your copy writing ability for effective sales pitches This is essential for a writer. I know it is, who doesn't... If you’re good at it and you have a smashing query letter, it will land you a contract with literary agents and editors within 48 hours!

Well...That’s never happened to me. Yet I’ve won three important Italian awards with my children’s book and the novel I wrote in Italian (called Un Amore Dimenticato - the precursor to my Fear of the Past Trilogy) published by a small press in Sicily got enthusiastic reviews in the local press.

Sicilians really, genuinely liked my book and marveled that a foreigner like me could understand them so well - but then, I've been married 35 years to a Sicilian and I know the island, its people and its culture intimately and perhaps can empathize all the more easily precisely because I am a foreigner, in short, a passionate, outside observer...

All this didn’t cut any ice with any literary agent in America and I’m sure it has something to do with my constitutional inability to sell myself (you won’t believe this but actually I’m very shy).

Yet more important is the ability to pitch your book – the famous “elevator pitch”: 30 seconds to sell your idea! Fifty world-shaking words to print across your book cover!

Sorry, I can’t do it. I’ve spent months mulling over sales pitches. Just can’t think of the best way to grab you, dear reader, and convince you that my book is like nothing you’ve ever read before! That it throws a new light on the human condition, on how we are all the prey of our family's past, on how our fear of failure can paralyze us. We have to shake off that fear, forget the past, and daringly play the cards that heredity has bestowed upon us - that's what Tony Bellomo does, finally rising to the challenge in the third book of the trilogy...

But all that sounds like big, empty words. I just don't have that special copy writing talent that makes you want to pick up a book and read it. But some gifted writers do...That is the case of American author and blogger Kim Golden, and I'm lucky she's read the first book in my trilogy and liked it. As anyone who’s followed her delightful blog (Kim Talks Books) knows, she is that rare bird who’s transcended her MFA and has developed an informed and sure taste in literature all the while honing her writing talent. If she tells you a book is worth reading, you better believe her!

Judge for yourself how she’s pitched my book (in a select list of Christmas reads she recommends):

"For the teenagers (and adults) on your list who prefer their Kindle to "normal" books, check out Forget the Past and Reclaim the Present, books 1 and 2 of Claude Nougat's Fear of the Past trilogy. Both books have the perfect blend of the paranormal, time travel, romance andhistorical fiction to hook readers from the first page. So what's it about, you ask? At 17, our protagonist, Tony, is a gifted video game creator suffering from burnout. He goes to Sicily (his deceased father's home) to recover and to discover his roots. One day, he finds himself drawn to an abandoned palazzoand is drawn into a strange world where the ghosts of his ancestors await Judgment Day. He also falls in love - with the ghost of the Duchess of Floridia. But can this love transcend time...? Well, you have to read tofind out. I've read book one and loved it. Going to order book 2 ASAP!"

I couldn’t have done it better! Indeed, I couldn’t have done it, full stop. And I’m very grateful to her for having expressed her judgment this way…

Now Kim, you can order the third book too! And let me tell you, you're in for a surprise: it's a...techno thriller! Tony is now battling both the Sicilian and Russian mafia to save the woman he loves and his creation, a new social network, a brilliant cross between Facebook and Second Life! No, in case you ask, I'm not on Second Life...

Happy Christmas and happy reading to all! Do let me know how you like the trilogy!

Claude Nougat’s books are available on:

Amazon,Barnes and Noble, iBookstore and Sony store.

PS: if you buy on amazon.com, just click on the banners in the right margin of this blog.

Euro Crisis: The Real Players Are Not Those You might Think

noreply@blogger.com (Claude Nougat) — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 18:04:00 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

The media would like us to believe that the Euro-zone is in the hands of Germany. After the Euro Summit of 8 and 9 December it certainly looked like it.

Frau Merkel succeeded in imposing her rules of the game to the whole of Europe: strict fiscal discipline and austerity. Growth that had been a French and Italian concern was firmly put on the back burner. Even firewalls to defend Euro-government in distress (including 200 billions to the IMF) have taken second place: none are at a level sufficient to defend a big economy like Italy's and they won't become operational for many more months, perhaps (in the case of the Stability Mechanism) next July at the earliest...

Still, there was a moment of enthusiasm. The media made a show of the 26 countries pulling together around Merkel's cure for the Euro while the 27th member of the Union - the UK - opted out with a flourish. Cameron claimed he vetoed Merkel's proposed amendments to the European Treaties to "protect the interests of the City" (which accounts for 10% of UK's national product).

The British bulldog is out of the European ring. The British media (see the UK Guardian article below) trumpeted that Britain can provide an "escape route" from the Euro that is collapsing, and thus "build a Europe outside the Euro". Conservatives crowed welcoming Cameron as their new hero. But City bankers and hedge fund managers begged to differ, as they now (rightly) feared that the City which needs Europe to be an active international financial center, runs the risk of becoming progressively marginalized.

With Cameron's precipitous and ill advised move, the UK has isolated itself from the European process of anchoring its currency and building "more Europe", as Merkel grandly calls it.

So tick off the UK. Regardless of what the British say in their press, they won't matter in the Euro crisis for some time to come.

So who matters?

This is first and foremost a financial crisis. To understand who is really pulling the strings in this show you have to look at the big financial players. And that's not the European political class, and least of all Merkel with her time-consuming cure aimed at the wrong objective: i.e. balancing budgets rather than stimulating growth. Only with growth is there a change to increase tax revenues and eventually achieve balanced budgets in future.

The market is fast and demands instant, credible solutions. Frau Merkel is slow and offers only long-run political solutions. If she has it her way, there will be plenty of time for the Euro to crash before European treaties requiring close fiscal discipline and coordination are amended and adopted.

Because there are forces at work right now to make the Euro crash: all those speculators who have placed their bets against the Euro. And it already hurts: there's a huge credit crunch going on at this time and European banks are scrambling to shore up their reserves. The last thing they're thinking of is to lend to their clients. Clearly a recipe for disaster and depression.

In these attacks against the Euro, American credit ratings agencies are playing a key role. They always issue warnings and downgrades at the most delicate junctures, precisely when a moment of silence would be welcome. Last week was no exception: before the Euro summit, they all announced that they were putting the Euro-zone members who still enjoyed an AAA rating "under surveillance". That means of course Germany and France. And small wonder: the German economic model, depending as it does on exports, is about to come crashing down as the recession deepens and demand for its exports collapses.

Because collapse it must. The handwriting is on the wall. The credit crunch that is paralyzing European banks is already felt in Asia, where loans and support to business acquisitions is slowed down or even frozen. If Germany cannot sell to Southern Europe on which it has imposed austerity and cannot sell to Asia because European banks have seized up, who are the Germans going to sell to? The Russians? They're facing an economic slowdown. The Americans? Come on, the Americans have still to come out of their own slow-moving recession and solve their unemployment problem...

Since the Euro crisis is exquisitely financial, it requires financial measures to solve. Not amendment to treaties. Sure, in the long run, Frau Merkel is right: close coordination of fiscal policies and measures are required for the stability of the common currency.

But is this the "fiscal compact" Mr. Draghi expected of Euro-zone governments? Surely he cannot hope for more from the European political class. Last week they gave all they had. And each country showed how committed it was to the European ideal: both Italy and Greece have gone to great pains to adopt belt-tightening measures. On the other side, in addition to the UK, Sweden and Hungary have also shown how little they cared about Europe. They might yet change their mind, but for the time being, they have opted out, saying they need to consult with their parliaments.

Yet the European Central Bank so far hasn't moved...much. Last week (what a week!) it has indicated to Euro-zone banks that they could consider the ECB as their lender of last resort. That's a step in the right direction. But bond buying of Euro governments in distress is still off the books: so far, the Bank has bought some 200 billions worth of bonds, one tenth of what the American Federal Reserve has done over the same period of time. In other words, the European Central Bank is still toeing the German Bundesbank line of refusing any "quantitative easing". That's the fashionable term for resorting to the money printing press and it is something the Germans won't hear about, in the misplaced fear that this could cause some sort of hyper-inflation. Germans are obsessing over the hyperinflation they suffered in the 1920s and that brought Hitler into power.

But times have changed! If anything, we're headed towards deflation - and even the Fed's generous quantitative easing has not had any noticeable inflationary impact...

Add to the mix the role of the American credit rating agencies, and you have a recipe for disaster.

The solution? Two major steps, one easy, the other not.

1. The European Central Bank should act as a central bank normally does, and engage in quantitative easing as appropriate and whenever needed; that's the easy step: once the ECB pulls out its bazooka, speculators will scramble for their lives...

2. American credit agencies should be taken off the books of whatever Euro-zone government structures where their rating is still used as a reference for investment (usually pension funds). This is something that is already proposed by America's banking regulators: that all references to credit rating agencies should be removed from regulations and be replaced with a formula based on a company's cash flow, leverage and volatility of its stock price to assess the riskiness of corporate debt. American banks have until February 2012 to comment on the new proposal before final rules are issued by the competent Federal authorities (the Federal Reserve, the FDIC and OCC).

Likewise, Europe should move forward on this chapter and a new Euro-zone credit agency should be created to substitute for the American ratings agencies, since they are even discredited in their own country. Of course this is not an easy step - the Chinese have already done so and created their own agency but it certainly hasn't yet attained the required credibility to be effective beyond China -. The process is undoubtedly delicate and time-consuming and complex (like Merkel's cure for the Euro). Nevertheless, it should be started.

It makes no sense that the Euro-zone economic well-being should be in the hands of American credit agencies (whose customers are the speculators attacking the Euro). And it makes no sense that the Euro-zone has a common currency that no one, and least of all the European Central Bank, is willing to protect...

E-book Price Battle: Free, 99 cents or Over Ten Dollars?

noreply@blogger.com (Claude Nougat) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 10:04:00 +0000

Image by gurana via FlickrWhat is the Right Price for an E-book?

Some people swear by the 99 cents price: they see it as the sweet spot for impulse buying.

Others claim that allowing your book to go free for a while is like a magical wand: it expands your market reach and brings in new readers who are then willing to pay for your other books.

Yet others - usually more conservative writers who believe in the intrinsic value of literature - think this sort of pricing policy is debasing. They can accept the idea that an indie will set prices below those practiced by traditional publishers in order to gain some traction in the market, but not much below - say around $10, or more precisely $9.99, the price where Amazon still pays a 70% royalty - because otherwise it would be like a public admission that one's books are not as good as traditionally published ones, that somehow indie books are second class!

Which price is right for a newbie selling a first book?

In the spring of this year, the debate raged, fueled by J.A.Konrath's regular sales reports on his blog, the Newbie's Guide to Publishing. Amanda Hocking, the indie author who shot to e-publishing stardom in just one year, making eventually a fortune with a fabulous advance from a traditional publisher, openly admitted that the 99 cents helped her launch her YA paranormal Trylle Trilogy. She used it systematically on the first book of her trilogy as a "loss leader", raising the price on subsequent books in the series (and so do I, by the way). Another indie e-star, John Locke - the man who famously sold one million copies in five months - still swears by the 99 cents price, claiming that it played a major part in his success. Let's note in passing that he also admits to using another marketing tool to great effect, what he has called "loyalty transfer" (i.e. finding like-minded readers who recognize the author "as one of theirs" and thus are eager and happy to buy his books) .

Konrath however presented a more balanced point of view. Openly sharing with everyone his monthly sales calling it a "price experiment", he eventually concluded that the magic sweet spot lay somewhere between $2.99 and possibly $4.99 but not higher. If he's right, John Locke by keeping his books at the 99 cents price level may well have foregone a considerable amount of revenue from his sales.

Now Konrath has sparked yet again another hot debate in the blogosphere publishing a post from one of his friends, author Elle Lothlorien who points to the marketing concept of "imputed value" as the correct way to set e-book prices. Using her own experience with pricing her novel The Frog Prince, she argues convincingly that the 99 cents is too low and books sell better at a higher price that adds "value", particularly in the eyes of readers who equate 99 cents books with trash. She claims that is what happened to her and that she started making more money and selling more books as soon as she raised the price of her novel.

To explain this phenomenon, she refers to Starbuck's coffee pricing policy: by pricing their product at the higher end, Starbucks has imbued its coffee with an "imputed value" that customers are induced to look for and even if they don't find it, they will be reluctant to admit dissatisfaction since they have paid a high price for the coffee. Nobody likes to admit to making a mistake!

Is a book like a cup of coffee?

Probably not, even though there is a lot of truth in the simile. By raising prices - say around $4 to $6 - indie authors send out a strong signal, saying "look my books are good, they have value, and even though I'm an indie and have to price at a lower level than trad publications to sell, I price them at a level far from trash." Setting your book in a price environment that suggests it is a valuable product will surely help sales (and your income!)

But can this be proved in some way? I have friends who are convinced that lowering prices and making their books free for a short period are valid and effective marketing tools. They invariably tell you "I've seen a bump in sales, more people are buying my books, that is proof enough for me!"

They may well have seen a "bump" in sales but I'm afraid this doesn't prove much.

That bump in sales would be convincing evidence only if every other marketing tool in use were suspended: no more blog posts, no advertising, no participation in readers' fora, no interviews, no blog tours, no reviews, no articles, no comments on other blogs on publishing and books, no use of Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn or any other social media - in short, if you put a full stop to your Internet presence and only play around with your book prices. Then you might see a result that you could attribute with a fair degree a certainty to your price changes.

Otherwise, no. No way. There are too many other factors at play to be sure that the price had the effect you are claiming for it.

The solution?

In my opinion, use your common sense. Vary your price strategies: use the 99 cents as a "loss leader" but don't do it all the time and for every book - better restrict it to the first one in a series and for a limited period (in fact I shall soon raise the 99 cents price on Forget the Past, the first volume in my trilogy to align it with the other two). Ditto for a free price campaign: it should be kept as short as possible in order not to send out the wrong signal. Experiment with higher prices like Lothlorien and see what works for you: find the price you feel comfortable with, that is not degrading to you and that makes you the "right" amount of money...

What is your opinion?

Writers’ Chat: Self-publishing in the Digital Age

noreply@blogger.com (Claude Nougat) — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 19:36:00 +0000

Author Kelly McClymer

Pitfalls and Advantages of Indie Publishing

Authors are rushing to self-publish as the digital revolution has removed the stigma attached to self-publishing. These days the once flourishing vanity presses are notably by-passed. The routes to self-publishing are several: from direct access to Amazon’s KDP and other digital platforms to using the services of Smashwords, BookBaby or others to upload ebooks. The blogosphere is abuzz with news of once traditionally published authors like J.A.Konrath who have struck it rich and the fabulous successes of new authors like Amanda Hocking and John Locke who’ve sold millions of copies.

I recently met with author Kelly McClymer, a traditionally published author who has decided to try self-publishing. Since 2010 she has been uploading her books on Amazon’s Kindle store and other major digital platforms and you can find her Amazon author page here. So far she has uploaded six books, four short stories, and her next novel The Impetuous Bride is due December 24th.

Kelly maintains a very attractive blog, Kelly McClymer’s blog, check it here

Kelly is a fascinating author for yet another reason: she specializes in genre-hopping and has published science fiction/fantasy short stories, YA fantasy, historical romance, and chicklit. Her first book was published by Kensington in 2000. In short, she has accumulated over ten years of solid professional publishing experience. And as the readers of this blog already know, I have also started self-publishing after traditionally publishing books in Italian here in Italy, the latest being Un Amore Dimenticato in 2007, a precursor of my Fear of the Past Trilogy. A coming of age story, it is also cross genre and contains elements of romance, historical fiction, paranormal and techno-thriller. You can find my Amazon author page here.

Claude: Why did you decide to self-publish? I did it after the rejections I got convinced me my book, being cross-genre, would prove a hard sell! I had achieved a fair degree of success in Italy with an earlier version traditionally published by a small press and I thought I’d try my luck with self-publishing. But you, as an already established author in the US, were you dissatisfied in some way? Did you self-publish to move forward? To expand your readership?

Kelly: Two words: Joe Konrath. I read his A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing blog and realized I had out-of-print books that (I felt) had never been given a fair shot at finding readers. I’m a scientist at heart (though math challenged, I’m afraid). Joe made it seem that it was all a matter of sweat equity and getting a good cover artist. I had the skills to prepare documents from a lifetime spent doing that for others. What did I have to lose? Other than a lot of time, which would still be a learning experience (scientist would be my dream job, if I could remedy my math-disability; student for life is my avocation). The books certainly weren’t earning me any money sitting in my basement...although the used copies were making money for used book sellers. I did worry I would be wrong about the desire for my books. Did you?

Claude: The desire for my books? Yes, of course I was worried! Because Fear of the Past had found success in its Italian version didn’t mean that it would be successful once I had an American version (the protagonist is an American computer whiz kid in search of his family roots in Sicily). However I figured that the Italo-American community would enjoy it, particularly the family saga aspects as my protagonist meets his forebears going back 900 years! But once I had decided to self-publish, that’s when my real problems started! First I had to find someone to do the file conversion for me so the book could be uploaded on the various digital platforms. I’m a hopeless technology dunce! I bought guidebooks that promised me it would all be very easy to do and I tried. And tried again. And got nowhere! In the end, I gave up and used BookBaby’s services. How did it work out for you? Did you use Smashwords?

Kelly: Again. Joe Konrath. He helped me skip a lot of the fumbling. I found the Smashwords guide and found it made complete sense. I still do my own formatting now using Jutoh. I like doing it...except when it goes wrong. How easy was it to use a third party? Just send them the file and get back the correctly formatted files in return? What kind of turnaround? The good/bad of doing your own is the timeline is totally up to you. Turnaround can be quick, or very, very slow -- it all depends on the family drama and other work stacked up on the desk. Sometimes I wonder if I should outsource.

Claude: I think you are that rare bird who can do her file conversion herself and no sweat! Sure you don’t depend on anyone else and that’s a big advantage. But for common mortals like myself, one needs to be very careful about who does the file conversion. There a lot of experts out there offering their services, but it’s advisable to use someone trustworthy – for example someone suggested by your very source of reference: Joe Konrath. Or go to a service with a known reputation, like Smashwords or BookBaby. The difference betweent the two is however noteworthy and requires some thinking: Smashwords takes a % cut for their services while BookBaby charges a flat rate. Considering an ebook is on that virtual shelf forever, as Konrath would say, it would seem advisable to pick BookBaby and be done with it. Smashwords however offers additional services, like hosting and selling your book on their site. So, it’s a very personal decision in the end. But I'd like to add a word of caution: one has to be very careful in using all the freelance services available on Internet. Before hiring someone, look at a sample of their work. Because there is a problem here: people who work free-lance don’t have to answer to anyone for their mistakes, quite unlike staff working for a publisher…So mistakes are answerable only to you! Once the book is up on that virtual shelf and readers start complaining, that's when you realize the services you got were not quite as good as you thought. I think this is equally true for any proof-reader or editor you find online. What is your experience in this respect, Kelly? Any trouble with the quality of proof-reading or editing you’ve bought online?

Kelly: I agree. When you indie publish, the buck stops at your desk, even if you outsource. I find myself quite nervous every time I outsource editing, or proofing, or covers. But I’ve always been very pleased with the result. So far. And I’ve had plenty of nightmare editing/proofing in traditional publishing, so I know the grass is not greener on the other side (copy editors who like to change your researched facts are extremely annoying).

Claude: That’s interesting! My experience in publishing here in Italy has been very positive: editors and copy editors were very helpful and in my view improved my manuscript. So I guess it takes all kinds to make the world! But not so regarding book covers. On this, I’d have to agree with you. On my children’s book an illustrator was imposed on me by the publisher and I positively disliked her art. I was lucky with my second publisher who allowed me to use my own paintings. But book covers are unquestionably a big hurdle for self-pubbed authors. While I knew I could provide the art for the cover, I was totally unable to handle the typography for the title and general layout of the cover. For a professional looking cover, I used BookBaby’s services and I think they did a pretty good design. How did you go about it?

Kelly: I love your covers. They’re beautiful. No wonder, if you’re a painter! My first set of covers were created by a local young artist I knew. They were beautiful, but a little too modern for my books, so I then (again, per Konrath) had them redone by someone with experience creating romance covers. I’m probably going to get them completely redone again sometime in the next few months, as I’m releasing the last two books in the series, and my former cover artist is not taking more work. Do you think you’ll always use your own paintings? Maybe even create paintings to go with your books as you write them? That seems like it would be powerfully creative (if you are talented at art, which I am not, sadly).

Claude: Goodness, yes! I really enjoy doing my own book covers. Painting is so relaxing compared to writing! I love to move back and forth between the two. For my Fear of the Past Trilogy I was inspired by the lions decorating the façade of the Circolo di Conversazione of Ragusa – the place that inspired the setting of my novel and indeed gave me the whole idea! I’ll never forget when I walked in that Circolo some ten years ago: it was filled with people that looked just like ghosts! For my next book, Rich, Fat and Bored, you can easily imagine how the title suggests the painting to go with it! But let me turn to the biggest problem for indie authors: book promotion! There are really two major tools available for book promotion: pricing and advertising on one’s website or blog and other social media. Let’s start with pricing, because that’s the single most important marketing tool in the hands of a self-pubbed author! Freedom to set your own price, to decide on “loss leaders” – like I’ve set the first book of my trilogy at 99 cents but the others cost more! And I won’t leave that price for much longer either. Are you a believer in the 99 cents price as the prime mover of “impulse buying”? Have you ever set books for free (at least for short periods) to boost sales?

Kelly: As it happens, I have experience with both the 99 cents loss leader and the free giveaway. I did a 99 cents promotion beginning on Mother’s Day 2011, and going through much of the summer. It was centered around the fact that my daughter was newly engaged and I wanted to give her a nice family-centric wedding. The promotion sales built slowly, but then went through the roof. Sales of my other books did very well. In fact, the boost from that promotion continued into the fall, even after I raised the price back to $2.99. However, sales began to drop in October, so in early November, I tried a free promotion. I gave away more than 40,000 copies of The Fairy Tale Bride. Sales of the other books bumped back up nicely, too. Timing is everything, though. I may have tried the free promotion a little early to capture the big Christmas e-readership. Only time will tell. The scientist in me is gleeful at having so much interesting data to chew on. The mother in me is pleased that I should be able to afford my daughter’s modest (for our big family) wedding in late summer. By the way, speaking of expanding sales -- how do you feel about Amazon opening sites in Spain and Italy? You’re already ahead of the game, because you can translate your own work. Do you see that as a potential sales bonanza for you?

Claude: Yes and no. I can’t speak for Spain but in Italy we’re still eons away from the Digital Revolution. Few people own e-readers, you never see anyone walking around with a Kindle – an iPad, yes, but as everyone knows iPads don’t tend to be used as much for reading. One thing that might boost sales is the fact that the $2.00 surcharge Amazon slapped on its Italian customers will be taken off (apparently that’s their policy: remove the surcharge once a Kindle store has opened in the country). But perhaps it won’t make that much difference anyway because Europeans are used to paying much more for their books on average: prices of $20 to $30 don’t scare anyone off – so lowering the price on books set at $3.44 – which is what one pays for purchasing a book priced at 99 cents in the American market – probably won’t change the game…Turning now to the other big aspect of book promotion: building your presence on Internet. Turning yourself into a “brand” – and that means using actively Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn. These seem to be the major ones an author would need to be on. Do you use others like StumbleUpon and Tumblr or do you do videos and use YouTube? I haven’t done a video yet so I confess I’ve done nothing in that direction. How about you?

Kelly: I’ve been tempted to do webcasts or podcasts, using my teaching experience to create inspirational writing tips and tricks for everyone else who’s struggling with getting the words just right, or even trying to decide where the art stops and the business side begins. Time is a factor. At the moment I think Twitter and my blog are my two favorite “platforms.” Facebook is third. I don’t understand StumbleUpon or Tumblr yet, but I’m trying. To get off topic a little, I am “starring” in a Kickstarter video for the startup game app company my son and I started. It is rather horrifying, if I must be honest. But for a good cause -- our games are meant to boost core reading skills for people with dyslexia. Having done that video, I know what not to do next time. It does help that my younger son is a videographer who is a whiz at FinalCut. Now all I need is someone to manage my makeup and wardrobe.

Claude: Your wardrobe? I love your hat and I hope you’re using it in that video! I agree with you: because of a lack of time I also rely mostly on my blog (as most of my readers know). I don’t even have a writer website (though I have a website as a painter). As a writer, it is however essential to maintain a blog to connect with your readers, to share not just your books but your interests with them! I’ve heard that in the US even if you’re traditionally published you need a blog. Because unless you’re a Big Game Author, traditional publishers don’t really do the book marketing for you. Have you found that to be true in your experience?

Kelly: Yes. Even my traditionally published books need a little push from my end, although Simon & Schuster has been good about making sure libraries and bookstores know about the books I publish with them. I do find that having my blog helps my readers find me, whether they are reading my traditionally published books, or my indie republished backlist books. I was never good at keeping my diary up to date, but I find that inviting guests to blog helps keep things hopping. I really enjoyed it when you guested a few months ago to talk about the inspiration for your books, and so did my readers. Do you have any tricks to keeping your blog duties manageable?

Claude: And I really enjoyed being on your blog! Tricks to keep blog duties manageable? Not really. In my case, current events can get me really worked up, like the Euro crisis for example. If the Euro crashes, so will Europe, and mind you, so will America and the rest of the world. We risk a big recession that’s going to make the Big Depression look like a Sunday ride! And all this because a bunch of people – the Germans in particular – are making serious mistakes, imposing austerity instead of focusing on measures to revive growth. That’s the sort of issue I feel compelled to write about now and then, even though it has nothing to do with books and publishing. Mind you, a Big Depression would hurt the book market too! I’m not sure that blogging about such issues helps my blog traffic. For maximum traffic, you’re supposed to operate within a “niche” and address yourself to “your” audience – what is my audience given my far-flung interests? Oh well… sigh! The only lesson here for new bloggers is: pick a niche where you’re an expert and stick to it! Lately I’ve turned to other social media. Like Twitter where I’m active since March. How about you?

Kelly: I’m a magpie, too -- interested in many things and unable to keep to a niche. I love Twitter (more for what I glean from so many useful links to articles and blog posts of interesting to me than for what I can communicate to others). Facebook has always been more about keeping up with family for me. My page is beginning to grow a nice “Like”-ership, so I’m trying to take it more seriously. It helps that I’m doing a lot and have a chance to share quite a bit. I also like Goodreads as a place to share information about books and reading. Is there any other social media you’ve been interested in trying?

Claude: Quite a few, really, including Goodreads that I enjoy very much. I’m also trying to maintain a presence on Facebook, LinkedIn and Google + but I’m finding it difficult to find the time to follow and post everywhere! Recently I’ve just had an article “What is the Real Use of Twitter?” accepted and published on EzineArticles.com It looks like a very interesting and lively site, full of authors and journalists. We’ll see how it goes… Given all the work from book production to book promotion, are you happy with your choice of self-publishing? Has it worked for you and would you recommend it to a midlist author? To a newbie?

Kelly:I have been re-energized in my own writing career by being able to see how many people have been interested in my books. In fact, I’ve used my daughter’s upcoming wedding as an inspiration to promote my out of print historical romance (the series is Once Upon a Wedding, so it seemed like a natural fit). Because of that inspiration, I’ve had a great deal of success with my historical romance books. Books I’d expected never to make any money for anyone but used book sellers again. Plus, I had fun writing a short story to complement my YA novel Must Love Black, as requested by a reader. Interestingly, I now have more understanding of what a good publisher can do for you (emphasis on good). Sadly, more and more publishers are expecting the authors to do all the promotion work, even as they pay smaller advances. I don’t rule out another traditional publishing deal (in fact, I just had an idea that I think would appeal to a traditional publisher). However, my future books will not spend years languishing in an agent/editor’s To Be Read pile. If I think they will be better served at a traditional publisher, I’ll submit and see if an editor agrees with me. If they don’t in six months or so, then to Amazon and Barnes & Noble I go. After editing and professional cover, of course. The freedom of that choice makes me giddy. I do advocate this as a path for any writer, newbie or old hand. However, newbies do need to make sure to get the stars out of their eyes and see their manuscript for what it is. If it isn’t ready, you’ll do yourself no good getting it out there.

Claude: Thanks Kelly for the interesting discussion and I’d like to end on the optimistic note you’ve just sounded! And I support your word of caution to newbies: make sure the quality is there! And be prepared to work much harder at your book promotion because, unlike authors who have been traditionally published, you don’t have readers out there yet…

You can find Kelly McClymer’s books available at many ebook retail sites. For a complete listing, visit her at Backlist Ebooks.

Claude Nougat’s books are available on:
Amazon,
Barnes and Noble,
iBookstore and
Sony store.

N.B. the last book, Remember the Future should be out this week!

Self-Published Books: the Digital Age Slush Pile?

noreply@blogger.com (Claude Nougat) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 19:45:00 +0000

Amazon Kindle has probably passed the one million mark in e-book titles as of now, considering that it stood at 750,000 a year ago, and adds as much as 1,000 titles a day!

Much of it self-published (how much is not given to know) - thus giving self-published authors what they see as a "level playing field" with traditional publishers, both big and small. The digital revolution has wiped away the stigma of self-publishing, giving indies a unique opportunity to distribute their books and connect with readers without having to go through a traditional publisher.

Most certainly a unique opportunity but as I have already pointed out once before, full of pitfalls for the newbies (see here for my post on the subject). Not so for the already published author with a fan base: he/she has a much better chance "to make it", particularly on the marketing side, than an aspiring author whom no one has heard of.

This much is obvious. But there are other reasons, and I'm not the only one ringing the alarm bells. Here's a fascinating article published on The Millions, an online magazine offering coverage on books, arts, and culture since 2003. The Millions has been featured on NPR and noted by The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Village Voice, among others.

One of its staff writers, Edan Lepucki, recently made a list of reasons not to self-publish:

1. Traditional Publishing is not Dead:

This is an important point Edan makes right from the beginning, and something one should keep in mind when considering self-publishing:

People love to talk about how traditional publishing is dying, but is that actually true? According to The New York Times, the industry has seen a 5.8% increase in net revenue since 2008. E-books are “another bright spot” in the industry, and the revenue of adult fiction grew by 8.8% in three years. (Take that, Twilight!)

Of course, the industry has troubles. The slim profit margins of books; the problems of bookstore returns; the quandary of Borders closing and Amazon forever selling books as a loss-leader; how to make people actually pay for content, and so on. Furthermore, the gamble of the large advance strikes me as ridiculous — and reckless, considering that editors and marketing teams have no real clue which books will be hits and which ones...

And yet. And yet. I read good books by large publishing houses all the time, books that take my breath away...I trust publishers. They don’t always get it right, but more often than not, they do...As I said...“I want a reputable publishing house standing behind my book; I want them to tell you it’s good so that I don’t have to.”

One of Edan's readers commented that this showed she lacked self-confidence as a writer - that she should need "validation" from a publishing house in order to find the courage to publish.

Validation? Maybe. But it is still true that the publishing industry has a "slush pile" system to filter incoming submissions from aspiring writers and sift out the "outstanding" ms, the one that "will sell". Of course, what a publisher or a literary agent who is the front line in this slush pile filtering process thinks is "outstanding" is clearly an entirely subjective matter...

2. Literary Fiction is Not a Big Seller in Self-Publishing on Digital Platforms:

Another point Edan makes, but perhaps misleading:

Many of the writers who have found success in self-publishing are writers of straightforward genre fiction. Amanda Hocking writes young adult fantasy, dwarfs and all. Valerie Forster, who published traditionally before setting out on her own, writes legal thrillers. Romance, too, often does just fine without a publisher. Aside from Anthropology of An American Girl by Hilary Thayer Hamann, I can’t think of another literary novel that enjoyed critical praise and healthy sales when self-published. That’s not to say that it can’t — and shouldn’t — happen, it’s only to point out that it’s a tougher road for writers of certain sorts of stories.

Several people commented (including myself) that what sells is a "good story" rather than any specific genre. But it is equally true that "straightforward genre" - particularly Romance - trumps literary everytime, in both the digital and real world of printed books. Literary books make a lot less money on average, but it is in the literary category that "black swans" tend to arise more often - you know what I mean, the unusual book that sets a new trend in literature, like, for example, Tolkien's books that started a whole new genre, the medieval fantasy...

On a secondary note, Edan added:

Readers like me aren’t seeking out self-published books. Why not? That’s for another essay. (Please, can someone else write that one?) Until the likes of Jeffrey Eugenides and Alice Munro begin publishing their work via CreateSpace, I don’t see the landscape for literary fiction changing anytime soon.

She also later in the article confesses that she hasn't got an e-reader - undoubtedly it partly explains the pro-traditional publisher bias in her list. But still, I believe that this list is not something self-published authors who have gone digital should dismiss or underestimate. Most people still read printed books!

3. A Small Press is Often an Aspiring Writer's Best Friend:

Probably based on her own experience with small presses, Edan has yet another point:

The conversation about self-publishing too often ignores the role of independent publishing houses in this shifting reading landscape. Whether it be larger independents like Algonquin and Graywolf, or small gems like Featherproof and Two Dollar Radio, or university presses like Lookout Books, the imprint at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, which recently published Edith Pearlman’s Binocular Vision (nominated for this year’s National Book Award), independent presses offer diversity to readers, and provide yet another professional option for authors. These presses are run and curated by well-read, talented people, and they provide readers with the same services that a large press provides: namely, a vote of confidence in a writer the public might have never heard of. Smaller presses, too, enjoy a specificity of brand and identity that too often eludes a larger house...

True enough but small presses can easily go bankrupt. I know mine did here in Italy, in 1991 when I published a children's book that was an instant success with critics and won three prestigious Italian national awards (that was the first time I made money off my writing!). I thought I had it made, I was euphoric until the press defaulted and never distributed my book anywhere in Italy. Just folded and that was that! I was working full time in the United Nations and didn't have the courage - or time - to pick up the pieces and try to sell it elsewhere...

4. Self-Publishing is Better for the Already-Published

Perhaps the smarter, and far more seductive, path is the one where the writer begins his career with a traditional publisher, and then, once he’s built a base of loyal readers, sets off on his own. The man who loves to talk smack about the publishing industry, J.A. Konrath, already had an audience from his traditionally-published books by the time he decided to take matters into his own hands. It’s much harder to create a readership out of nothing...

How true! And I would add that when you re-publish on a digital platform a book that has once been published traditionally, most of your book presentation and promotion problems are already solved.

When you self-publish you are on your own: you have to decide the genre of your book, the sales pitch, the cover style etc etc. I know how hard that can be: my Fear of the Past Trilogy is really cross genre: historical (many characters are historical but the protagonist isn't - he's a computer whiz kid ); paranormal (in the limited sense that the protagonist meets his ancestors in a Place Out of Time in Book 1 and is trapped in the mind of his great-great grandfather in Book 2, in time to witness the collapse of his family) but there are no scary ghosts or gore. In book 3, the protagonist takes his own life in his hands and fights the Sicilian and Russian Mafia, trying to save both the woman he loves and his creation, a social network that is an innovative cross between Facebook and Second Life. Thus, you could argue Book 3 is both a romance and a techno-thriller and all three books are focused on the protagonist's self quest and his attempt to rid himself of the burden of his family's past.

So what genre is it? Does that make it Young Adult (age group, 14 to 18)? Strictly speaking no, because the protagonist who's 17 at the start of the trilogy is 22 when it ends! So I guess it's general fiction for general reading, hum...

Perhaps a better title for the Trilogy would have been Fear of Failure, because that is the fear that haunts and paralyzes this brilliant young man who doesn't really know who he is and what he can achieve...a fear, I believe, that besets not just the young but all of us. Imagine! Here I go and self-publish a book and once it's up there on the virtual shelf, I have second thoughts and doubts about its very title!

Sure I could pay an editor to go over it (I have actually) and give me advice. But can I really trust the advice since I'm the one paying? Isn't that person going to be tempted to tell me what I want to hear? Or perhaps not give it much attention since being freelance, there are plenty other jobs beckoning out there?

5. Publishers Add Value to Your Books

Here, to make the point since Edan is not yet published herself, she got one famous author's opinion:

I decided to ask the most famous writer I know, Peter Straub, if he’s ever considered leaving the world of big publishing and putting out a book all by his lonesome. After all, he’s a bestselling author and editor of more than 25 books (18 novels alone!), and he’s a horror writer beloved by genre geeks and snobby literary types alike... He told me:

True self-publication means writers upload content themselves, and plenty already do it. I’m not quite sure how you then publicize the work in question, or get it reviewed, but that I am unsure about these elements is part of the reason I seek always, at least for the present, to have my work published in book form by an old-style trade publisher...
Most of the editors I have worked with over the past thirty-five years have made crucial contributions to the books entrusted to them, and the copy-editors have always, in every case, done exactly the same. They have enriched the books that came into their hands. Can you have good, thoughtful, creative editing and precise, accurate, immaculate copy-editing if you self-publish?

Exactly right. You can't, can you?

As I just said above, if you're the one paying, the temptation is great for the editor and copy-editor to just get the job done as fast as possible and move on to the next client.

Now, on the other hand, if the editor is part of the publishing house's structure he/she has to think of his/her career. The job has to be well done because the editor is part of an institutional structure that demands quality books.

That's a very big plus provided by traditional publishers to their authors.

Ditto for book covers of course. Some authors have problems with their publisher's book covers or illustrations (I know I did - for my children's book the illustrator the publisher selected was awful and I was lucky with my second book in 2007: the publisher agreed to use one of my paintings for the cover). But overall, publishers aim for a certain style/brand and that can only be helpful in the long run.

6. The E-Reading Conundrum; or, I don’t want to be Amazon’s Bitch

Edan here used a strong word: "Amazon's bitch" (I didn't - the subtitle is entirely hers) and she goes on:

Many self-published authors have gone totally electronic, eschewing print versions of their work altogether. I can’t see myself taking that route, however, because I don’t own an e-reader, and I don’t have plans to buy one (not yet, anyway… I read a lot in the bath, etc., etc.). It seems odd that I wouldn’t be able to buy my own book — I mean, shouldn’t I be my own ideal reader? I also prefer to shop at independent bookstores, and in fact, I pay full price for my books all the time. The thought of Amazon being the only place to purchase my novel shivers my timbers. I don’t mind if someone else chooses to read my work electronically, just as I don’t mind if Amazon is one of the places to purchase my work; I’m simply wary of Amazon monopolizing the reading landscape. Self-publishing has certainly offered an alternative path for writers, but it’s naive to believe that a self-published author is “fighting the system” if that self-published book is produced and made available by a single monolithic corporation. In effect, they’ve rejected “The Big 6″ for “The Big 1.”

As you my readers know, I've gone "digital" and so far no printed version of my Fear of the Past trilogy exists but I'm working to upload one on CreateSpace (will let you know when the printed version becomes available). But honestly, I don't believe there any reason to fear becoming “Amazon’s bitch”. Why fear Amazon? Why use the degrading term "bitch"? If there is this (bizarre) possibility, you could argue that there is equal danger in becoming anyone of the Big Six Publishers’ bitch! In any case, one can always go (as I have) to another digital platform: Barnes & Noble (the Nook), iBookstores (for the Ipad) or Sony Stores or even sell the books directly on one's website like Rowland is doing on Pottermore. Indeed, it is highly advisable and makes total economic sense to publish on as many platforms as you can. Amazon is not the only digital player, and worldwide it may never become The One (but that's the subject of another post!)

7. What Happens When the Digital Revolution Swells the Number of Books to the Point of Making it Look like a Slush Pile? Is it Best for Readers?

Edan is very clear on that:

As a member of the reading public, I am not prepared, or willing, to wade through all that unfiltered literature. As a writer, I must put my head back to the grindstone and write a book that more than a handful of readers can fall in love with.

One can only agree with her: I'm also busy "putting my head back to the grindstone" and writing my next novel. That's why we're writers, right? But to argue that an avalanche of self-published books is a bad thing per se...Well, I don't agree.

First, the cream will rise to the top. It always does: word of mouth is still the best and time-honored way to spread knowledge about good reads. It may take time, but trust me, good books will always be discovered, sooner or later.

Second, in the Digital Age, clever electronic ways can be devised to speed up book discovery. Amazon already does a remarkable job of it and indeed that is why it is fast becoming a major publisher, perhaps even (as I once posted - click here) the Next Big Publisher.

But, as Seth Godin says (see article below), book discovery on e-readers is still in its infancy. He acknowledges readily that the success of his Domino publishing project was based on a core group of 50,000 subscribers. He reportedly has just shut the project down not because it failed, but because it seems he wants to get involved in other things, saying this was merely a "project" and as such should "come to an end". And there is little doubt that Konrath's success in selling his thrillers has a lot to do with the success of his blog (500,000 visits a year, so he says).

Publishing Perspectives recently reported on one small bookstore's fascinating quiz to help readers find their next read in function of their tastes (yes, bookstores still exist and are very innovative and dynamic - indeed, if they weren't, they wouldn't survive in the Digital Age...) I took the quiz just to see how it works - it was fun to take by the way - and I was amazed at how well it worked! It immediately suggested a book of the kind that I really like to read... But I didn't buy it because this book was not available...on the Kindle! Still, I'm convinced that quiz would work wonders on Amazon or any of the other digital platforms: fun to take and effective in identifying attractive titles!

I would love to hear your reactions to these points! Do you believe the days of traditional publishers as "gatekeepers" of literary taste are over? Will ways be found to avoid turning the mountain of e-books on Amazon (and elsewhere) into a "slush pile" discouraging readers?

For the full article, go to : The Millions : Reasons Not to Self-Publish in 2011-2012: A List:

Note: Edan Lepucki, on The Millions's staff, is a fiction writer and instructor living in Los Angeles. Her stories have been published in major magazines (McSweeney's, Narrative Magazine, Meridian, and the Los Angeles Times Magazine, among others). Learn more about her writing classes at writingworkshopsla.com.

Angela Merkel and the Euro Crisis: Is She an Angel or a Demon?

noreply@blogger.com (Claude Nougat) — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 11:11:00 +0000

Merkel - Sarkozy- Monti Press Conference in Strasburg, 24 November 2011

On Thanksgiving Day, while Americans ate their beloved turkey and pumpkin pie, the world started falling apart.

It happened in the course of a press conference in Strasburg where Angela Merkel, Germany's Chancellor and French president Sarkozy magnanimously received the visit from the new Italian premier Mario Monti.

Our dear Angela (an angel?) got once again busy stoking the fire that will consume the Euro.

While Monti looked increasingly uncomfortable and Sarkozy smiled benevolently, she was very clear in her school-marmish way: forget about Eurobonds and using the European Central Bank to bailout governments in financial trouble. The European Central Bank's "independence should be preserved"! Of course, she failed to add that she is the first one attacking the Bank's independence and dictating what the Bank should do and should not do.

If her objective was to kill Europe, she came close to achieving it.

She is always saying "Nein!" to all measures that could save the Euro. There has been a lot of talk that Europe has been driven by the German-French Duo, and the arrival of Monti on the scene heralded the start of a European Triumvirate - not something Monti likes, being someone wedded to the cooperative approach to build Europe, without leaving anyone out. A generous position if ever there was one.

But the truth of the matter is, Europe is not driven by a Duo or a Triumvirate.

Europe is driven by Germany - a Germany that refuses to help fellow Europeans. A Germany that always demands more austerity and promotes an economic model that is sure to suffocate economic growth, create untold pain and provoke social tensions across the continent.

Are you surprised that Germany is so negative?

I can't say I am. The spirit of perpetual negation is a profoundly German trait. Goethe knew this well when he wrote his famous line describing Mephistopheles:

Ich bin der Geist der stets verneint!
I am the Spirit that always denies!
(line 1338, in Faust)

So Ms. Merkel is no Angel: she is the Spirit that always says Nein!

She dashed hopes that she would listen to Monti who, being a good economist, had come to her with a sensible Eurobond proposal - sometimes called "stability bonds" but the idea is always the same: they would be collectively backed by Euro-zone governments and the interest rates would settle somewhere between the highest (Greece and Italy) and the lowest (Germany), probably around 5%.

Obviously an idea that is thoroughly disliked by Germans as it would make it more costly for Germany to raise money. But Germany had better think twice: it's latest bond sale crashed as one third went unsold, a clear signal that the Euro crisis has reached Germany at last, the core of the Euro zone. Reminding everyone that Euro zone members are in this all together. They will stand together or fall together.

Go and tell Ms. Merkel, the Spirit that says always Nein!

Instead she vaguely talked about changing the European Treaties first - a process that would take years and that the markets will not wait for. Because markets demand instant responses. And, yesterday, as soon as Merkel had finished talking, they dove down. Wall Street was closed but one may expect the markets to plunge further today.

Because the markets know something Ms. Merkel apparently doesn't. That if the Euro collapses, so will Europe and the rest of the world as we know it. Why? Because world trade will also collapse since Europe is the world's biggest trader and the largest market for both China and the United States. Once world trade goes, the ensuing economic tornado will make the aftermath of the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers look like summer rain.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this Euro crisis is the unquenchable optimism of German businessmen. Yesterday, a German survey reported that they felt more optimistic than ever. In what kind of world do Germans live?

How can they get it so wrong? I'll tell you, it's easy to understand. With the establishment of the Euro, things could not have gone better for Germany. First the Euro, launched at parity with the US dollar, plunged immediately below, making it cheap and stoking exports. A boon for the German economy that was in trouble at the time, with relative high wages and social tension. The export-led boom solved many of Germany's economic and social problems in the early 2000s, although it left a large segment of the population outside of the boom - additional reasons why Germans are in no mood to help bail out Euro zone countries that they see as profligate. Even with a high Euro, the Germans kept exporting. No doubt thanks to the quality of their products, but a major reason is also that German business has been able to obtain loans at the lowest rates in Europe. Lately there are signs that German exports are slowing down. Are German exporters worried by the Euro crisis? Not really. In the short term, they see it as something very, very good for Germany: as the Euro finally weakens, exports will become attractive again.

What German businessmen forget, is that currency movements can be very fast and unexpected. If a Central Bank is not allowed to defend its currency's stability when speculators attack it - the case now with the Euro - then the currency will crash, banks will fail, trade will stop, jobs will disappear, income will evaporate, savings will go down the drain, pensions will go unpaid...

It will usher in a new Financial Ice Age that will affect the whole world - yet another unpleasant aspect of globalization. It is likely to last much longer than the Big Depression of the 1930s, with much larger and longer lasting impact on society worldwide. The poor will get poorer - and hungrier - but the super-rich, that famous one percent, will also have lost everything.

And we shall all have Ms. Merkel to thank for.

Because there will be nowhere to go. Savvy investors for the moment are eyeing Dubai's sovereign debt figuring that with the Gulf Oil States, their money should be safe. Let the Euro collapse, one can always run to petro-dollars. But they're forgetting something: in a tradeless world, petrol cannot command the same prices...

Can anything or anyone at this point save the Euro (and the world)?

Yes, there is something.

Ms. Merkel, instead of saying that what the Euro and Europe need is "more Europe" (sounds intelligent but it is singularly bereft of any meaning in your mouth), why don't you start saying "Let the European Central Bank be independent and act as a Central Bank"?

You ackowledge yourself that currency stability is in the ECB's mandate. If it is, then let it work on it. Freely - let it act as a Central Bank should. And if it means issuing Eurobonds collectively backed by Eurozone members, making the bonds like US Treasury Bills, let it be. It will surely cost Germany less in the long run, just a few additional percentage points, compared to losing everything...

Ms. Merkel, which do you prefer?

Or is your aim to go down in History as as the usherer of the New Financial Ice Age?

A Triumviate or Lady Merkel's Boys? Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Twittermania: Why do you tweet? Does it help marketing?

noreply@blogger.com (Claude Nougat) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 10:41:00 +0000

Image by xotoko via FlickrTwitter is a game, Twitter is a political tool, Twitter is a celebrity hunt, Twitter is a waste of time!

A waste of time? Yes, that's the conclusion that one writer came to after reaching 25,000 followers. Larry Carlat (that's his name) humorously described in a New York Times article (November 15, 2011) how Twitter had become a mania that destroyed his normal social relationships and even affected his job. To tweet, he found he was repairing to the toilet in restaurants so as not to be seen by family and friends. That's when he decided to stop. He deleted his Twitter account and you can't even find him on Facebook!

What is Twitter for you? The 140 characters you are allowed for a message: is it a challenge to express all you want to say? An advantage to zero in on the very essence of the message? A way to sell and promote your stuff? A neat tool for sharing links to interesting articles, books, products and what-have-you? A game to see how many followers you can get? A way to increase your Internet presence?

In a recent article in Time Techland, Graeme McMillan (on Twitter: @graemem) asked his followers that very question: why do it and is it better than other social media? The implication for most people being: is Twitter better than Facebook (or Google+ for that matter, should it ever compete successfully against Facebook).

He got some very interesting answers which can be condensed as follows:
1. the "tight" form enables "sampling strangers efficiently" and keeps friends "from rambling too much", while Facebook does neither;
2. Twitter is a cocktail party or a meeting at the watercooler or waterhole, take your pick; it "supplements your social life, while Facebook seeks to replace it";
3. Twitter "ignores the barriers of class, age and locale" and enables you to follow what celebrities and politicians say.

A recently released Pew research study, based on a survey of over 2,000 adults conducted in April-May 2011, shows that 66% of Americans are on social media (such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace or LinkedIn) and most - roughly two thirds - are there to connect with family and friends and half say they've used the new technology to connect with old friends they'd lost sight of.

That leaves only one third of Americans who're on social media for "cocktail party" reasons

In other words, Americans who use social media to find interesting strangers or follow celebrities. More precisely: 14% say they connect around a hobby or shared interest, like say the writers' community - an area where I certainly try to connect on Twitter and tweet about; my other interests of course being politics and art, as anyone who's read this blog knows. Mind you, the writers' community - considering also literary agents, editors, publishers etc - is actually huge. How big I don't know, but consider that there's an estimate of two million writers published and unpublished in America alone!

Then there are only 5 percent who read comments by political figures (take that, politicians! You are not followed as much as you think you are!) and 3 percent who seek romance. Obviously Twitter is not the place for romance ( I would say that among my 1,000 followers I have about a dozen "ladies" who've sent me very sexy pictures of themselves, probably taking me for a man because of my first name - btw, these are people who don't tweet...) .

But let me get to the key statistic:

Only 9 percent - that little! - say that making new friends is important to them.

Why Twitter is not necessarily the Best Place to promote your business.

If only 9% of the Americans in the Twitterverse are out there to find new friends and new things, it doesn't bode well for marketing. As Graeme McMillan says, this goes a long way to explain why business and media outlets who send out links to their products aren't getting very far.

Unless the tweet with your link is a great conversation starter, it will be ignored.

I've experienced that again and again. I send out tweets with links to articles that I find interesting but that is not enough. I have to think of something fun/arresting/special to say about the said link, or else it falls flat on its face.

This is especially true for writers who send out tweets that promote their books. Nothing could be more boring than a message that says "buy my book", and even adding that it's a steamy romance or an awesome thriller won't get you anywhere.

Have you ever bought a book on the basis of a tweet?

I know I haven't. Unless the book is a new one from an author I know and like.

Which brings up my next point: whatever link you send out to your followers, make sure it goes to an interesting product - whether article, book or gadget. Bottom line, content is king. Your followers will stop following if the links you send out are not to their liking.

For example, on the days I tweet about politics I can tell quite a few of my followers unfollow me. My growth on Twitter has been extraordinarily zig-zaggy. At first, that puzzled me. Then I realized that there is a stong undercurrent in the American writers' community that dislikes politics. Writers, on average, are not politicized (or if they are, they keep it to themselves) because they are afraid of losing readers.

This fear is understandable and makes sense in America, given the strong polarization of American politics. Republicans won't read a writer who's blatantly a Democrat, and Democrats won't enjoy a Tea Party writer.

As a European, I find this is not quite so true here. Though for decades in Italy (at least until the fall of the Berlin Wall), you didn't have a hope to get published if you didn't belong to or were supported by the Communist and/or Socialist parties. That was also true in France. Now that has changed, and there's a lot more tolerance towards a writer's political inclinations. Quite frankly, I don't think they matter in Europe anymore, you won't lose or gain readers on that basis.

If your experience on this is different, please let me know!

Is Twitter a Political Tool for change?

Under this heading there are two main considerations:

1. Having a lot of followers makes sense if you're a political site issuing orders/policy slogans/strategy moves.
But it doesn't make sense if you're a political operative/agent working within a political movement.

I'm thinking of the way people used Twitter in the Arab Spring, Indignados or Occupy Wall Street movements. Here you want to connect with other fellow agents and coordinate the street theater that your movement has organized. You want to know to what street, square, building you're supposed to go and at what time and for how long. Twitter is an entirely tactical tool - much like a telephone or radio call.

Facebook can also help organize an event, but it's much more static. Last minute changes can't be announced or acted upon. On that score, Twitter is more agile and operates in real time.

2. Twitter is a form of "micro-blogging" in that it can support and spread a political campaign's main slogans. It can't replace a blog or a newspaper article because it can't dig in depth into an issue. But it can echo and amplify it, enriching it with related ideas/slogans as it spreads.

Lessons to be learned for marketing:

The successful use of Twitter as a politcal tool combined with what the Pew research tells us about how Americans use Twitter suggest some general lessons for marketing:

1. The product you sell needs to enjoy near-instant recognition and general support - for books, it's "loyalty transfer", as pointed out by John Locke, the successful seller on one million e-books on Kindle in just a few months. In short, your readers have to empathize with your books's subject matter - or with you, the writer.

2. The number of followers you have is less important than the way you interact with them. For effectiveness, it has to be a two-way conversation. That has happened to me several times on Twitter and I can honestly say I've made new friends thanks to Twitter.

How do you stay atop of your Twitter stream when you are followed by thousands and follow an equally enormous number? Even at 140 characters a message, there's too much to read!

There are several ways to do that.

For example, you can use Tweetdeck to create columns of tweets categorized by subject matter. You can create your own "Daily" with Paper.li which enables you to keep track of all the news/tidbits from favorite Twitterer you're interested in and that show up on your Twitter stream while you're busy elsewhere (you can't be on Twitter 24 hours every day!).

3. Marketing has to be orchestrated as a political campaign, with objectives and an implementation plan.

You can't just tweet at random buy my book, read my blog. You can't shower your followers with messages or you'll be considered a spammer. Constant tweets are irking.

On the other hand, you can't go silent and wake up six months later: people expect a steady stream of (hopefully) valuable information. And since a tweet's "shelf life" is relatively short (4 to 5 hours) and people live in different time zones, you have to tweet accordingly (the same message sent out at broadly different times of day to "catch" your audience).

4. Be aware of what your audience likes. Check your followers' profile: are these the people most likely to buy your product? Follow people whose profile you deem "right" for your product. Some will follow you back.

Use hashtags with a subject matter related to your product: it will capture the conversation around that topic. It enables anyone on Twitter who's searched that hashtag to find your tweet. Retweet messages related to your product.

Okay, these are just a few of the more obvious elements for a winning marketing strategy on Twitter.

I'm sure there are others and that you can point to them.

I'd love to hear about your experience on Twitter! Have you found it useful to your goals - like sell your product or bring readers to your blog?

Euro Crisis: Is There a Way to Stop the Contagion?

noreply@blogger.com (Claude Nougat) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 18:55:00 +0000

"Stability"by Rickydavid via FlickrAfter Greece, the Euro crisis has spread to Italy and now Spain.

Next on the list: France, Netherlands and Finland or perhaps Austria.

One after the other, countries are the prey of market attacks, each worse than the preceding one. This week, the spread between German and Spanish bonds has for the first time become as wide - some 500 points - as it is between German and Italian bonds.

500 points seem to be the magic number at which countries and markets panic.

The point at which investors decide that a country's ability to keep paying its debt is in peril. The spread with Italy has been hovering there for some time now, causing rating agencies (in particular Fitch) to downgrade Italy's credit rating from AA- to A+ a month ago, thus signalling the beginning of the Italian crisis and the end of Berlusconi. At the same time Spain was downgraded from AA+ to AA-... better than Italy, but barely so. And lately France has been forewarned that it risks losing its prized AAA rating.

Moreover the market for futures is tumbling while the Euro drops against the dollar.

Conventional wisdom - repeated at nauseam in the press - is that at this level Italy's debt (some 1.9 trillion Euros) is unsustainable. Italy's economy will implode under the weight of its debt. And this is not Greece. We're talking here of the third economy in the Euro-zone.

Once Italy goes, so does Spain. Then Belgium (the spread here is already critically high) and next, why not, France.

When that happens, nothing can save the Euro. With unimaginable consequences in the rest of our globalized world, as the Euro drags down with it international trade, American banks and Chinese exports.

This means that your savings, your pensions, your job in whatever part of the world you happen to live in are at risk.

Over one fiery week-end Italy has shown the world how quickly it can move

Following Berlusconi's retreat, the new government was put together in record time - a government headed by Mario Monti - here in Italy he's called "Super Mario" - a world-respected economist and former EU Commissioner. It is purely a "governo tecnico" made of technocrats and managers plus one diplomat (the Italian Ambassador to the US was nominated Minister for Foreign Affairs). Thus Monti was careful to select outstanding personalities in the world of academia, finance and diplomacy, including three women, while maintaining for himself the key role of finance minister. He's not going to let any other economist get in his way!

Yet, in its first day of life, Monti's government was not appreciated at home. Protests planned earlier, before Berlusconi 's government fell went ahead anyway. Consisting of a general strike of public transports and student marches in most major cities (with some violence in Milano and Palermo), they struck average Italians as singularly irrelevant and off base. Give the guys a chance to show what they can do!

Sure, Monti picked some bankers in his team and he himself has a Goldman Sachs experience although that hardly means Goldman Sachs controls Monti (or controls Mario Draghi, who's also an ex Goldman Sachs). One in particular, Corrado Passera, provoked rage among the protesters - but what was Monti supposed to do if he wanted the best? Everybody seems to forget that Passera, before he headed the San Paolo Intesa bank had turned around the old, inefficient Italian Postal system and made it a remarkably efficient and well-run organization. All of a sudden, the much derided Italian Postal system had stepped into the 21st century!

Passero may have been into banking lately but he is above all a manager, and now that he has been placed in charge of economic development, one may expect him to work wonders. And that is bound to become a key area in Monti's strategy: because debt control cannot be achieved at the expense of economic growth.

Sure Monti talked about placing a tax on the "first house" ("ICI" on the main house of residence) and seemed to bow from pressures from Berlusconi who doesn't want to see any wealth tax ("patrimoniale") - no surprise there, since Berlusconi's sole reason to enter politics was and is to defend his own interests. The richest man in Italy, he's not about to pay any tax to anyone if he can help it. And Italy and the Euro be damned!

My hope is that Monti will in fact resist Berlusconi and will not put undue pressure on the Italian middle class (the one paying this famous ICI tax on the "first house"). Because if he does that, he'd be putting at risk Italian consumption and hence Italian economic recovery. But he's too good an economist not to know that...And he enjoys 75% support in opinion polls and easily won votes of confidence in both houses of Parliament. So chances are good that he will implement the necessary reforms and set Italy on a course to recovery.

Is the Reform Plan Monti Offers Enough to Solve the Euro Crisis?

No. The timing is off. We won't know for many months whether Monti's government will be able to operate a turn around for Italy. My bet is that it will, but markets can't wait that long. Incidentally, the same can be said of Greece or Spain.

Reforms take time and markets are impatient.

People are impatient too. In the Netherlands, they're talking of establishing the "Neuro" - a Euro reserved to Germany and the Netherlands - the best in the class - and just about no one else. They're ready to "shed off" all those rascally Greeks and Italians who never learned to tighten their belt. Taxpayers in those northern countries don't want to pay for rescuing their southern neighbors who in their view are only getting what they deserve. A kick in the pants, ja!

The Way Out? Get the European Central Bank to act as a real central bank - like the US Federal Reserve

Mario Draghi (another Super Mario!) is growing impatient. He just told a banking conference in Frankfurt "Where is the implementation of these long-standing decisions?" He was referring to the European Financial Stability Facility that was supposed to save the Euro and has yet to become operational.

Will it ever become operational? I don't think so.

First, It's way too small in relation to the mountain of debt it's meant to cover (440 million). Second, it's way too shaky to reassure investors. It's meant to be a financial scheme providing insurance to investors in say, Italian or Spanish bonds. In case of default, they would only be covered at best up to 20 percent of value, and possibly not even that if France, one of the two major investors in the Facility (the other being Germany) should lose its Triple A credit rating. Because that would mean the Facility itself would no longer have a Triple A rating either.

French President Sarkozy, on the occasion of the G20 meeting in Cannes, tried to convince China and other big players like India and Brazil to invest in the Facility to expand it. No such luck so far.

What other solutions are there? Shedding Euro partners, in spite of the Dutch desire to do so, is a non-starter. Greece has made it very clear that it wishes to stay in and Papademos, its Prime Minister - another economist with a remarkable profile, similar to Monti's - has embarked on a reform program.

No, Euro partners must stay together or all go down together.

Which is why the European Central Bank should act as the lender of last resort - to both banks and governments.

Which is why Europe must move to "more Europe", as Ms Merkel has recently said (lately she has unexpectedly shown more enthusiasm for the European Union).

The Euro-zone needs to become a fiscal union, with all monetary, fiscal and economic policies aligned - the kind of policies that are precisely those Italy and Greece are working to implement.

One remaining hurdle: the German fear of inflation

Why is the European Central Bank (ECB) dragging its feet? Because the Germans don't want it to print money. They say the ECB was never set up to buy bonds or engage in any "quantitative easing" policies the way the US Federal reserve does.

As far as Germany is concerned, the ECB was set up to fight inflation and keep the Euro stable, full stop.

The fact that there is nothing in the ECB charter that talks about a "lender of last resort" role is however a moot point. Basically a central bank should be independant from any government or political views and able to do whatever it sees as necessary, including quantitative easing.

If quantitative easing is the only way to "keep the Euro stable", so be it. Let it go ahead and work as a Central Bank should.

Why is Germany so fearful of inflation? It's an old story, a historic fear: they remember the run-away inflation of the 1920s that brought Hitler into power. Germany is afraid History will repeat itself.

But this is not the 1920s! There is no danger from inflation. On the contrary: look at the US! Under Bernanke's guidance the Federal Reserve has repeatedly engaged in quantitative easing and so far this hasn't triggered any inflation and as the latest statistics show, consumer prices are down this quarter in the United States...Not to mention that inflation is not an issue in Europe right now.

Given all this, it's not quite clear why the European Central Bank is still not moving.

Up to now, I thought it was Trichet's fault. Before heading the ECB, Trichet had been France's central banker and had the usual training of top French civil servants: ENA, Sciences Po and the Ecole des Mines - a great cv that prepared him well for administrative work but he's not an economist. Mario Draghi, on the other hand, is a trained economist: he earned a Ph.D. in economics from MIT. He knows what banking is all about: from the private side (Goldman Sachs, right!) and from the public side (the Italian Central Bank, the World Bank and other international work on financial regulations). This is a man who surely understands what a Central Bank is supposed to do.

My bet is that he's dragging his feet to force governments to engage in the necessary reforms. And if and when he's going to come to the rescue, he certainly won't announce it.

Central bankers famously are the quiet sort that never tell you what their next move will be.

But investors, in my view, would do well not to underestimate either Draghi or the ECB's clout.

What is your opinion?

Post scriptum: Mario Monti is travelling through Europe these days, visiting Sarkozy and Merkel with a special project in his bag: Euro-bonds...And a request that the Stability Facility be established asap.

Claude Nougat - The Blog

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Book 2 of Fear of the Past at:

Book 3 of Fear of the Past at:

For those who prefer their books printed, it will be available end February on Amazon (all 3 books in one volume - 520 pages)

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Happy Holidays!

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