Blog – Page 50 – Michael W Lucas

August 26, 2016September 3, 2016

See Me in 2016

I have two more public appearances in 2016.

October 7-8, I’ll be at Ohio LinuxFest. They’ve asked me to speak on Introducing ZFS.

November 8, mug.org has invited me to talk about PAM. This is election day in the United States, so the talk is on how PAM is Un-American.

Sadly, family commitments prevent me from going to MeetBSD in Berkeley. Plus, there’s the whole “get on a plane” thing, which I try really really hard to avoid. I’d probably do it to see Berkeley, though. I’m pretty sure a pilgrimage to Berkeley is required once during my lifetime.

Other than that, you can catch me at a Semibug meeting.

August 22, 2016

Cover reveal for “PAM Mastery”

For the first Tilted Windmill Press tech books, I elected to create covers from photographs. Some went over well, some less so.

For the FreeBSD Mastery books, I persuaded Eddie Sharam to create parodies of classic art. It’s far more expensive than photos, but reaction has been positive.

PAM Mastery is almost ready to go to copyedit, which means I need a cover for it. I’ve elected to continue the parody art. Without further ado, here’s the cover.

I’ve gotten some great feedback from DES, author of OpenPAM, and need to incorporate that into the manuscript. Once that’s complete, I can send it to copyedit!

August 18, 2016

Wherein the past haunts me, but in a good way

Back around 1992 (or so), I published a role-playing game called Gatecrasher. This was back in the day when RPGs were on paper, and used all sorts of weird dice.

In retrospect, Gatecrasher was a triumph of vision over skill. The main design goal was “use all the dice.” But if you wanted to do something like “Spaceships and Sorcery,” playing an angel in enchanted chain mail wielding a propane-powered flaming sword and struggling to scrounge up spaceship fuel in time to make the Mars-Jupiter Hohmann transfer window, you could.

We did the main book and a single supplement, Believe It Or Else!, before the company folded, in the first of my many educational failures.

There’s not much on Gatecrasher on today’s Internet, but I did find one of the reviews of Believe It Or Else!

Around 1998-ish, I had moved on. My career in RPGs was dead, and I had focused on writing fiction, with occasional forays into writing tech articles for Sys Admin magazine. There wasn’t any future in writing tech stuff, but it was nice getting my name in print now and then.

One day I came home from work to find a Gatecrasher fan letter. On paper. Handwritten by a 12-year-old boy. He absolutely gushed about how he loved the game, but couldn’t find a copy of the supplement. He hoped I could tell him where to buy it.

I had no idea where to buy it.

Well, what can you say to that? I wrote him a polite letter back, thanking him, and sent him a signed copy of the second book. By “signed,” I mean “I scribbled a whole bunch of lunatic stuff on the inside cover including, if I recall correctly, the lyrics to ‘Mr. Reaper’ sung to the tune of ‘Mr. Sandman.'”

And that was it.

Occasionally I wondered if I’d scribbled too much daftness in that book and scared the poor kid’s parents so badly that they confiscated the book, but mostly it was just a bright spot in my ever-growing past.

Until today.

I got an email from that same kid. Okay, not kid. Ex-kid. Adult. Whatever they call thirty-year-olds these days.

At the time he wrote that letter, his home life sucked. Playing Gatecrasher with his friends helped him survive adolescence and grow up into a successful adult, with a career in IT and a spouse.

This is the most amazing, wonderful, heart-wrenching fan letter I have ever received.

If you’re a fan of something, tell the creator. Even if it was something from decades ago. They’ll love to hear from you. Especially if it’s something obscure, that the rest of the world has forgotten.

I still have a terrible time saying “thank you” when someone says nice things about my work. But it’s important that us creative sorts do that. Those fans might just come back two decades later…

August 2, 2016

I’ll be at Rust City Book Con

On 12-14 August, I’ll be in Troy, Michigan, at the first ever Rust City Book Con.

Actually, I’ll be there on the evening of the 11th, hanging out in the bar and practicing my socialization. (“Smile. You know, retract your lips to expose your teeth. No, no, not that far! Better. Hold out your hand–oof! Ugh… A little slower, and (gasp) with an open hand, not a fist. Remember, this isn’t your dojo. Now say ‘Hi! My name’s Lucas, who are you?’ Close, but it’s ‘who,’ not ‘what.’ And a little less teeth.”)

I have panels Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Unlike Penguicon, I only have 3-4 events, so I have a lot more free time to ~~sit in the empty corner of the lobby and contemplate the emptiness of existence~~ talk to readers.

There’s also a bunch of other writers there, most of whom are far cooler than me. You should show up and see them.

July 13, 2016

Scottsdale AZ redux

I’ll be in Scottsdale, Arizona, for a few days on family business.

Readers, fans, and detractors are welcome to join me Friday 15 July 2016, 6PM, at Frank & Lupe’s Old Mexico.

And yes, there’s a gelato shop within walking distance. Several, actually.

I’m very hopeful that, while this might not be my last trip to Scottsdale, it will be the last trip to Scottsdale in the summer.

July 12, 2016

“PAM Mastery” tech reviewers wanted

My long-dreaded PAM book now exists as a complete first draft.

I’m sorry.

I’ve somehow persuaded Dag-Erling Smørgrav, author of OpenPAM, to do a technical review. DES knows PAM, to his eternal regret, but I really could use more people to review the manuscript before it hits print.

If you know PAM, and would be interested in pointing out my errors before the rest of the world gets a chance, drop me an email with the subject PAM review. Tell me your familiarity with PAM, so I know the context of your feedback.

I’d need any feedback by Monday, 8 August 2016. That’s about four weeks. Given that this book is longer than Tarsnap Mastery but shorter than DNSSEC Mastery, that should be enough time.

I should say, though: this is a book on PAM. It’s not on LDAP, or SSSD, or Kerberos. I cover several add-on PAM modules, but all in the context of illustrating and leveraging PAM.

With luck, the book will be available Septemberish.

June 20, 2016

My BSDCan “OpenPAM & BSD” talk

My BSDCan 2016 talk on OpenPAM and BSD is now on YouTube.

The video comes straight from screen capture, which means it’s missing details like the green dot of the laser pointer.

Also, the audio only covers my voice. You don’t get all the audience interaction. Sadly, I forgot to repeat audience questions at the end, but you can figure most of them out based on my responses.

Also, I need to stop saying “um.” I really need to stop saying “um.”

June 17, 2016July 24, 2018

Why I refuse to join Kindle Unlimited

Lots of my self-pub writer friends urge me to sign on with Kindle Unlimited. They tell me I’ll make more money by making my books only available on Amazon.

They’re probably correct… in the short term.

But if you have only one customer, and only one sales channel, that sales channel can destroy yo without warning. And today, Amazon’s scam-fighting techniques are crushing authors guilty of only one thing: trusting Amazon as their sole customer.

Puzzled? It took me a while to figure out how this scam was working, too. And it’s driven home that signing on with Kindle Unlimited is like playing Russian roulette. Eventually, it will burn you.

Understanding why means understanding how Kindle Unlimited works.

An author places a book in Kindle Unlimited agrees that the title will be exclusive to Amazon. You won’t be able to get it on iBooks, Kobo, or sell it on your own store. Authors can place any fraction of their books in Kindle Unlimited.

Readers who sign on with Kindle Unlimited get unlimited access to books in KU for $10/month. Readers can try the service for free for 30 days.

Amazon sets aside a pot of money each month. This money is divided between KU authors each month, based on the number of pages of the author’s books people read. Amazon increases the pool each month, keeping the payout per page somewhat constant.

An author who violates KU’s terms of service gets their publishing account suspended. All of the books published with that account get yanked from sale, and any money Amazon hasn’t paid out is lost.

As a businessman, I have problems with Kindle Unlimited. The price you get paid has nothing to do with how many you “sell”–it’s entirely in Amazon’s control. They can change that at any time, and you have no recourse. The exclusivity clause means that readers who like Kobo or another ereader have no way to legally get your book.

Also as a businessman, Amazon offers little interaction with suppliers. Yes, I write books, but that’s with my author hat on. Once I take off the author hat and put my business hat on, I sell widgets. (Strictly speaking, I sell nothing: I license copyright. That’s a separate discussion, though.) If Amazon has a problem with me, they’ll shut me off with minimal explanation and not give me an opportunity to get back in compliance. They might offer a big publisher a chance to make whole, but not a little company like mine.

I’m a full time author. Yes, my wife works, but she’s not supporting me. Our goal is to be able to live on one person’s income, so that if something happens to one of us we will be okay. If I do not make enough money to realistically contribute to my family, then I need to get a job that does.

By that measure, I’m successful. (Thank you, loyal readers!)

An amount of money sufficient to support my family is small enough that Amazon does not care about me. My business is quite literally not worth an hour of an Amazon support rep’s time.

So: if I screw up, if I anger the 800-kilogram capybara that is Amazon, and Amazon is my sole customer…

I’m out of business. Kaput. Done. Finished.

Most one-person publishing businesses are smaller than mine. And Amazon cares even less about them. I don’t know if you can have negative caring, but if you can it’s in Amazon’s software.

Let’s go back to how Kindle Unlimited works. The rules are simple. The purpose of simple rules is to be abused. Anyone who knows anything about fraud, or anyone with a security background, can come up with half a dozen ways to scam Amazon out of a share of the profits.

Here’s a way that seems to be in play today.

Start a “book-booster” service. The service automatically generates Amazon accounts and signs them up for the free 30-day Kindle Unlimited trial. It can also “read” the books. This can be built out of the same freely-available software used for building web sites.
When an author buys the service for one of his books, the service checks out “reads” the book.
Poof! The book climbs in the bestseller lists.
The boosted ranking makes the book more visible. Perhaps some real humans will notice it.
The author gets money from Amazon’s pool.

This is a clear violation of Amazon’s terms of service. If you get caught, the Amazon Capybara will eat you. You’re out of business.

Depending on how you ask, the current book-boosting algorithm is either naive, or takes advantage of Amazon’s ranking methods. It borrows the books all in one day. In reality, book sales are spread out and erratic, achieving averages only on a quarterly or even yearly basis.

It seems that when Amazon sees a book getting a one-day sales spike, from accounts that act in concert, it concludes that the author has hired a book-boosting service and closes the author’s account.

How do these book-boosting services attempt to hide their customers?

By also boosting Kindle Unlimited authors who have not hired the service. They’re attempting to make this seem like normal activity.

The catch is–again, Amazon does not care. To Amazon, authors are plentiful and of low value.

If Amazon sees this kind of boost on a KU author, they unilaterally close the publishing account. All books, including those not on Kindle Unlimited, are removed from sale.

And this is only one scam among many. Amazon crushes these scams with extreme prejudice. It isn’t looking to crush one-person publishers, but if a few low-value publishers like mine get caught up in scam-fighting software, that’s an acceptable loss.

There’s no way to know when one of these scam-fighting measures is about to hit you. Amazon’s decision-making processes are opaque.

Now, let’s look at life without Kindle Unlimited.

As a publisher who uses Amazon as one of many sales channels: Amazon is about half my income. Losing them would suck.

If I signed on with Kindle Unlimited, I would probably get enough additional reads to more than compensate for the loss of Kobo, iBooks, and so on. But then I’m completely and utterly at Amazon’s mercy.

I’m playing the long game. No, not a year-long game, or a five-year game. Try twenty years, a hundred years.

My ultimate goal is to guide readers directly to my site for everything, providing a disintermediated revenue stream for myself and my heirs. I want to transform Amazon, Kobo, iBooks, and all the other bookstores into billboards that pay me. That directly conflicts with using Kindle Unlimited.

Where do you want to be in twenty years?

June 10, 2016June 10, 2016

FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS (Version canadienne)

I’ve wondered for a while what to do about Allan Jude.

Allan is my co-author on FreeBSD Mastery: ZFS and FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS. I could have written those books on my own, but they wouldn’t have been nearly as good.

We have had one major disagreement, though: is it pronounced zee-F-S or zed-F-S? This has proven an intractable problem.

I’ve come up with a solution, though.

FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZedFS – Canadian Version.

Here’s the front text.

This book exists because Allan Jude is too generous for his own good.

Alan has aided my efforts to become a professional writer in ways that can never really be paid back. They can only be paid forward.

The only real disagreement we had while writing this book was on the pronunciation of ZFS. Is it zeeFS, or zedFS? This special edition of FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZedFS exists as a physical token of my appreciation.

What makes this book different from the regular edition?

First, the special Canadian cover.

The text is modified to be more palatable for Canadian readers.

This edition contains a footnote that does not appear in the standard edition.

And last, this edition has not been proofread or copyedited.

Thanks, Alan, for everything.

Michael W Lucas
24 May 2016

The catch is: it’s only available in print.

Only five of them exist. (The electronic originals have been destroyed, so I couldn’t exactly reproduce this if I wanted to.)

I have one.

Allan has three. (There’s a YouTube video of part of the presentation.)

One, and only one, will be on sale.

The only place to get it is at the BSDCan charity auction, benefiting the Ottawa Mission.

BSDCan attendees, this is your one and only one chance to get a copy of this exotic, rare object.

Ask Alan or myself for a peek at it.

June 8, 2016

Getting Ahead of Blackmail

Here’s the interesting things about blackmail: it only works if the victim permits himself to be embarrassed. A victim who is willing to release everything renders himself invulnerable to such threats.

People have wondered how I make a living as a writer. It all depends on how you sell your product.

Sorry, David. You’ll have to buy your books like everyone else. Meet me in the alley if you’re still interested.