#unsold but reserved

[robinsceramics]

Emo owl </3

[image ids: six pictures of a small ceramic owl that seems to be wearing black eyeliner. It is pale gold or cream in color, with tiny spots of dark brown in the glaze. The owl has no wings or features except two tiny feet and its eyes; its head is marked only by an indentation in the smooth oval of the owl's body. The eyeliner on the left side of its face is heavily smudged and seems to drip down the owl's cheek.]

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How a billionaire’s mediocre pump-and-dump “book” became a “bestseller”

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/15/your-new-first-name/#that-dagger-tho

I was on a book tour the day my editor called me and told me, "From now on, your middle name is 'Cory.'"

"That's weird. Why?"

"Because from now on, your first name is 'New York Times Bestselling Author.'"

That was how I found out I'd hit the NYT list for the first time. It was a huge moment – just as it has been each subsequent time it's happened. First, because of how it warmed my little ego, but second, and more importantly, because of how it affected my book and all the books afterwards.

Once your book is a Times bestseller, every bookseller in America orders enough copies to fill a front-facing display on a new release shelf or a stack on a bestseller table. They order more copies of your backlist. Foreign rights buyers at Frankfurt crowd around your international agents to bid on your book. Movie studios come calling. It's a huge deal.

My books became Times bestsellers the old-fashioned way: people bought and read them and told their friends, who bought and read them. Booksellers who enjoyed them wrote "shelf-talkers" – short reviews – and displayed them alongside the book.

That "From now on your first name is 'New York Times Bestselling Author' gag is a tradition. When @wilwheaton's memoir Still Just A Geek hit the Times list, I texted the joke to him and he texted back to say @jscalzi had already sent him the same joke (and of course, Scalzi and I have the same editor, Patrick Nielsen Hayden):

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/still-just-a-geek-wil-wheaton

But not everyone earns that first name the same way. Some people cheat.

Famously, the Church of Scientology was caught buying truckloads of L Ron Hubbard books (published by Scientology's own publishing arm) from booksellers, returning them to their warehouse, then shipping them back to the booksellers when they re-ordered the sold out titles. The tip-off came when booksellers opened cases of books and found that they already bore the store's own price-stickers:

https://www.latimes.com/local/la-scientology062890-story.html

The reason Scientology was willing to go to such great lengths wasn't merely that readers used "NYT Bestseller* to choose which books to buy. Far more important was the signal that this sent to the entire book trade, from reviewers to librarians to booksellers, who made important decisions about how many copies of the books to stock, whether to display them spine- or face out, and whether to return unsold stock or leave it on the shelf.

Publishers go to great lengths to send these messages to the trade: sending out fancy advance review copies in elaborate packaging, taking out ads in the trade magazines, featuring titles in their catalogs and sending their sales-force out to impress the publisher's enthusiasm on their accounts.

Even the advance can be a way to signal the trade: when a publisher announces that it just acquired a book for an eyebrow-raising sum, it's not trumpeting the size of its capital reserves – it's telling the trade that this book is a Big Deal that they should pay attention to.

(Of all the signals, this one may be the weakest, even if it's the most expensive for publishers to send. Take the $1.25m advance that Rupert Murdoch's Harpercollins paid to Sarah Palin for her unreadable memoir, Going Rogue. As with so many of the outsized sums Murdoch's press and papers pay to right wing politicians, the figure didn't represent a bet on the commercial prospects of the book – which tanked – but rather, a legal way to launder massive cash transfers from the far-right billionaire to a generation of politicians who now owe him some rather expensive favors.)

All of which brings me to the New York Times bestselling book Read Write Own by the billionaire VC New York Times Bestselling Author Chris Dixon. Dixon is a partner at A16Z, the venture capitalists who pumped billions into failed, scammy, cryptocurrency companies that tricked normies into converting their perfectly cromulent "fiat" money into shitcoins, allowing the investors to turn a massive profit and exit before the companies collapsed or imploded.

Read Write Own (subtitle: "Building the Next Era of the Internet") is a monumentally unconvincing hymn to the blockchain. As Molly White writes in her scathing review, the book is full of undisclosed conflicts of interest, with Dixon touting companies he has a direct personal stake in:

https://www.citationneeded.news/review-read-write-own-by-chris-dixon/

But this book's defects go beyond this kind of sleazy pump-and-dump behavior. It's also just bad. The arguments it makes for the blockchain as a way of escaping the problems of an enshittified, monopolized internet are bad arguments. White dissects each of these arguments very skillfully, and I urge you to read her review for a full list, but I'll reproduce one here to give you a taste:

After three chapters in which Dixon provides a (rather revisionistd) history of the web to date, explains the mechanics of blockchains, and goes over the types of things one might theoretically be able to do with a blockchain, we are left with "Part Four: Here and Now", then the final "Part Five: What's Next". The name of Part Four suggests that he will perhaps lay out a list of blockchain projects that are currently successfully solving real problems.

This may be why Part Four is precisely four and a half pages long. And rather than name any successful projects, Dixon instead spends his few pages excoriating the "casino" projects that he says have given crypto a bad rap,e prompting regulatory scrutiny that is making "ethical entrepreneurs … afraid to build products" in the United States.f

As White says, this is just not a good book. It doesn't contain anything to excite people who are already blockchain-poisoned crypto cultists – and it also lacks anything that will convince normies who never let Matt Damon or Spike Lee convince them to trade dollars for magic beans. It's one of those books that manages to be both paper and a paperweight.

And yet…it's a New York Times Bestseller. How did this come to pass? Here's a hint: remember how the Scientologists got L Ron Hubbard 20 consecutive #1 Bestsellers?

As Jordan Pearson writes for Motherboard, Read Write Own earned its place on the Times list because of a series of massive bulk orders from firms linked to A16Z and Dixon, which ordered between dozens and thousands of copies and gave them away to employees or just randos on Twitter:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7emkx/chris-dixon-a16z-read-write-own-nyt-bestseller

The Times recognizes this in a backhanded way, by marking Read Write Own on the list with a "dagger" (†) that indicates the shenanigans (the same dagger appeared alongside the listing for Donald Trump Jr's Triggered after the RNC spent a metric scientologyload of money – $100k – buying up cases of it):

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/21/books/donald-trump-jr-triggered-sales.html

There's a case for the Times not automatically ignoring bulk orders. Since 2020, I've run Kickstarters where I've pre-sold my books on behalf of my publisher, working with bookstores like Book Soup and wholesalers like Porchlight Books to backers when they go on sale. I signed and personalized 500+ books at Vroman's yesterday for backers who pre-ordered my next novel, The Bezzle:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/53531243480/

But there's a world of difference between pre-orders that hundreds or thousands of readers place that are aggregated into a single bulk order, and books that are bought by CEOs to give away to people who may not have any interest in them. For the book trade – librarians, reviewers, booksellers – the former indicates broad interest that justifies their attention. The latter just tells you that a handful of deep-pocketed manipulators want you to think there's broad interest.

I'm certain that Dixon – like me – feels a bit of pride at having "earned" a new first name. But Dixon – like me – gets something far more tangible than a bit of egoboo out of making the Times list. For me, a place on the Times list is a way to get booksellers and librarians excited about sharing my book with readers.

For Dixon, the stakes are much higher. Remember that cryptocurrency is a faith-based initiative whose mechanism is: "convince normies that shitcoins will be worth more tomorrow than they are today, and then trade them the shitcoins that cost you nothing to create for dollars that they worked hard to earn."

In other words, crypto is a bezzle, defined by John Kenneth Galbraith as "The magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it."

So long as shitcoins haven't fallen to zero, the bag-holders who've traded their "fiat" for funny money can live in the bezzle, convinced that their "investments" will recover and turn a profit. More importantly, keeping the bezzle alive preserves the possibility of luring in more normies who can infuse the system with fresh dollars to use as convincers that keep the bag-holders to keep holding that bag, rather than bailing and precipitating the zeroing out of the whole scam.

The relatively small sums that Dixon and his affiliated plutocrats spent to flood your podcasts with ads for this pointless 300-page Ponzi ad are a bargain, as are the sums they spent buying up cases of the book to give away or just stash in a storeroom. If only a few hundred retirees are convinced to convert their savings to crypto, the resulting flush of cash will make the line go up, allowing whales like Dixon and A16Z to cash out, or make more leveraged bets, or both. Crypto is a system with very few good trades, but spending chump change to earn a spot on the Times list (dagger or no) is a no-brainer.

After all, the kinds of people who buy crypto are, famously, the kinds of people who think books are stupid ("I would never read a book" -S Bankman-Fried):

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/29/sam-bankman-fried-reading-effective-altruism/

There's precious little likelihood that anyone will be convinced to go long on crypto thanks to the words in this book. But the Times list has enough prestige to lure more suckers into the casino: "I'm not going to read this thing, but if it's on the list, that means other people must have read it and think it's convincing."

We are living through a golden age of scams, and crypto, which has elevated caveat emptor to a moral virtue ("not your wallet, not your coins"), is a scammer's paradise. Stein's Law tells us that "anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop," but the purpose of a bezzle isn't to keep the scam going forever – just until the scammer can cash out and blow town. The longer the bezzle goes on for, the richer the scammer gets.

Not for nothing, my next novel – which comes out on Feb 20 – is called The Bezzle. It stars Marty Hench, my hard-driving, two-fisted, high-tech forensic accountant, who finds himself unwinding a whole menagerie of scams, from a hamburger-based Ponzi scheme to rampant music royalty theft to a vast prison-tech scam that uses prisoners as the ultimate captive audience:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

Patrick Nielsen Hayden – the same editor who gave me my new first name – once told me that "publishing is the act of connecting a text with an audience." Everything a publisher does – editing, printing, warehousing, distributing – can be separated from publishing. The thing a publisher does that makes them a publisher – not a printer or a warehouser or an editing shop – is connecting books and audiences.

Seen in this light, publishing is a subset of the hard problem of advertising, religion, politics and every other endeavor that consists in part of convincing people to try out a new idea:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/04/self-publishing/

This may be the golden age of scams, but it's the dark age of publishing. Consolidation in distribution has gutted the power of the sales force to convince booksellers to stock books that the publisher believes in. Consolidation in publishing – especially Amazon, which is both a publisher and the largest retailer in the country – has stacked the deck against books looking for readers and vice-versa (Goodreads, a service founded for that purpose, is now just another tentacle on the Amazon shoggoth). The rapid enshittification of social media has clobbered the one semi-reliable channel publicists and authors had to reach readers directly.

I wrote nine books during lockdown (I write as displacement activity for anxiety) which has given me a chance to see publishing in the way that few authors can: through a sequence of rapid engagements with the system as a whole, as I publish between one and three books per year for multiple, consecutive years. From that vantagepoint, I can tell you that it's grim and getting grimmer. The slots that books that connected with readers once occupied are now increasingly occupied by the equivalent of the botshit that fills the first eight screens of your Google search results: book-shaped objects that have gamed their way to the top of the list.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/03/botshit-generative-ai-imminent-threat-democracy

I don't know what to do about this, but I have one piece of advice: if you read a book you love, tell other people about it. Tell them face-to-face. In your groupchat. On social media. Even on Goodreads. Every book is a lottery ticket, but the bezzlers are buying their tickets by the case: every time you tell someone about a book you loved (and even better, why you loved it), you buy a writer another ticket.

Meanwhile, I've got to go get ready for my book tour. I'm coming to LA, San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, Calgary, Phoenix, Portland, Providence, Boston, New York City, Toronto, San Diego, Salt Lake City, Tucson, Chicago, Buffalo, as well as Torino and Tartu (details soon!).

If you want to get a taste of The Bezzle, here's an excerpt:

https://www.torforgeblog.com/2023/11/20/excerpt-reveal-the-bezzle-by-cory-doctorow/

And here's the audiobook, read by New York Times Bestselling Author Wil Wheaton:

https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_459/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_459_-_The_Bezzle_Read_By_Wil_Wheaton.mp3

[womblegrinch]

Alan Magee (b.1947) - Stones with red brick

Acrylic on canvas. Painted in 1982.

50 x 70 inches, 127 x 177.8 cm. estimate: US$20,000-30,000.

Sold Bonhams, New York, 7 Nov 2023 for US$10,240 incl B.P.

When an item is put into auction the vendor will usually place a reserve on the lot, usually around 75-80% of the lower estimate, that the vendor is willing to accept. When bidding begins, and only one bidder shows interest, the auctioneer will bid on the vendor's behalf against that bidder until the reserve has been met. If the bidder drops out the item will remain unsold. If more than one person is bidding, the auctioneer will not intervene unless only one bidder remains and the highest bid is below the reserve. Bidders can usually tell if they are bidding against the reserve or another buyer who has left a commission bid before the sale. Auctions can be like a poker game. If a bidder feels that the estimate is too high, that the vendor's expectations are too optimistic, they may not bid the item up to the reserve but rather approach the auctioneer after it's non-sale in the hope of securing the item. The vendor may not agree but prefer to enter it in a subsequent auction. It often happens that an artwork will sell later for a figure in excess of the price it could have been acquired for. Dealers have budgets, sometimes it just comes down to timing. In this case though, there doesn't appear to have been a reserve, often when an item comes from a deceased estate. The painting was there to be sold on the day. The auctioneer may indicate if there is no reserve in the catalogue, other times not. You've got to be in it to win it.

[smokersbaby]

Guys

Does the app “too good to go” exists in your country?

It’s an app where local food stores, pubs and supermarkets can make boxes of unsold or expiring products and they sell it for a reduced price (like you pay 4.99 and the minimum value of the box is 14.99) and you can reserve it and then go to the store to pick it up.

The box is a surprise so you don’t know which products you’ll find but you can imagine it by the typology of store that sells the box (like, bakeries are most likely to give you boxes full of bread and pastries).

I absolutely LOVE that app, I usually buy the boxes from a supermarket near my home and I pay 3.99 and normally the products have a value of 20-25 euros so it’s awesome 😭

[nickgerlich]

Here Comes The Sun

When opportunity knocks, it behooves you to answer the door, and answer it fast. Opportunity seldom knocks twice, and if you miss it, then it’s on you. And if you are a company, you best be ever mindful of what’s going on around you and who or what may be knocking, ready to seize the moment.

Like Frito Lay's SunChips and Moon Pie are doing right now, leaning into the upcoming total solar eclipse that will occur early afternoon of Monday 8th April. With brand names referencing celestial bodies, this is a no-brainer. But come Tuesday the 9th, the party will be over until 2044, when the next total solar eclipse is visible in the US.

SunChips is selling a limited edition Pineapple Habanero and Black Bean Spicy Gouda chip, and have partnered with astronaut Kellie Gerardi for the promotion. Moon Pie, reprising its effort from the 2017 eclipse, has gone all out with their boxed Survival Kit that includes four Moon Pies and two pairs of eclipse viewing glasses.

And as you might expect, both are pulling out all the stops on social media.

This is classic marketing opportunism, and it’s fun. No one is trying to capitalize on a bad thing, and all the other brands that do not have a celestial connection will have to sit this one out. Opportunity, in this case, came knocking for a select few, and only two answered the door.

Of course, there is some risk inherent, because all of that merchandise will be extremely dated on Tuesday. The shelf life is short, and while it might be possible that some collectors might clamor for unsold Moon Pie Survival Kit boxes if only because it is dated, I could see these things winding up at Big Lots and Ollie’s in a week or so.

Along the path of totality, hotels have been reserved for years. Even campgrounds are full up. But, as we know all too well, Mother Nature might not cooperate. We need clear skies for these kinds of things to happen, and the farther east and north you go along the arc of totality, the more those odds shrink, based on historic data.

As for Amarillo and Canyon, we will be at 87% totality, and of the cities on or near totality, have among the highest percentage of available sunlight year round (Lubbock and Midland are very similar too, all of us between 73% and 75%, and in the Top 15 of the nation). We might not have totality here, but the odds are more in our favor to see the event. Oh, and the event lasts only for about four minutes, so there’s little margin for error. Even Andy Warhol had 11 minutes more.

I am bummed that I have a campus class that morning at 9:30, and I can’t just cancel it for an eclipse. But…I could hop in my van at 10:45 and drive toward Dallas like a mad man, probably getting close to Vernon at the precise moment. I can reschedule office hours, because with the next total eclipse not happening for 20 years, I would be 85, and who knows what I’ll be able to do then.

Or just stay in Canyon and be happy with 87%. It will still make for some amazing photos. And while the special SunChip flavor doesn’t sound all that appealing to me, I would be happy to bring along some Moon Pies wherever I happen to be. The marketer in me is all too happy to throw some props to the companies answering opportunity. It’s a lesson we should all be remembering.

Dr “Everything Under The Sun Is In Tune” Gerlich

Audio Blog

[radio-charlie]

Yo look!!!!!! Pit Stop Community Cafe is finally getting more of the love it deserves. this is where i used to chop onion and serve dinner some days. Joycelyn and Andrea are amazing people and many of the volunteers are too

"However, we have seen returning street clients who have gotten breaks, found jobs, returning and saying thank you. Those experiences help us continue to do what we do," she said, adding that street kids whom they have helped have gone on to further their education.

The last time i was there i remember them having a small program where homeless and unemployed folks could train in their kitchen to learn how to cook. they reserved kitchen spots for them. also saw this while i was there:

To keep the cost of food as low as possible, Joycelyn said her team began rescuing and repurposing food that would otherwise have gone to landfills, for example, excess stock and near-expired goods, as well as unsold and "ugly" vegetables.

There was one day when we got a bunch of ice creams from Inside Scoop. goodness what a treat. another time, so much lettuce (from tesco? can't rmb) that we didn't know what to do with it. ended up having to take some home lmao

Let me know if u wanna volunteer with them sometime!! One of those places where you can be confident that the people in charge really give a crap about others

[redeyedroid]

Been meaning to talk about this for a few days, but holy fuck, what a week for women's sport.

(Before we get started: INR 1 lakh is about £1,000. INR 1 crore is about £100,000)

The Board of Control for Cricket in India have finally got behind the growth in women's cricket and are launching the inaugural Women's Indian Premier League this year and the player's auction was held last Monday.

The 5 franchises were each given a salary cap of about £1.6m to build a squad of 15-18 players by buidding for their services. So £8m to be spread among around 90 players.

Reserve prices began at 10 lakh rupees and were capped at 50 and while some players didn't generate much interest (for example, Royal Challengers Bangalore got a big bargain by securing the Australian bowler, Megan Schutt at her reserve price of 40 lakh, and Alyssa Healy only went for 70 lakh) a few made bank.

Mandhana cost RCB 28% of their cap. No other player in either the men's or women's IPL takes up as much of their team's cap as her. It's also nearly 7 times the value of her central contract with the BCCI to play for India and vastly more than the £30k she gets playing in the gimmicky Hundred tournament in England.

It's a fresh tournament and the teams need stars to act as faces of the franchise. And so, in places they've mirrored the men's game. Mandhana, India's best batter and who wears 18, joined RCB, whose men's team have Virat Kohli, who also wears 18. (They also signed Ellyse Perry for 1.7 crore and the destructive Richa Ghosh for 1.9 crore). Harmanpreet Kaur, India's captain, got 1.8 crore from Mumbai, whose men's team feature Rohit Sharma, who is also India's captain.

These prices are for a tournament that begins on March 4 and ends on March 26. Three weeks. 8 to 10 games. Pro-rata, the top women are getting paid like footballers (and even those whose salaries are counted in lakh are getting healthy paydays).

This tournament will be successful. The BCCI wouldn't be doing it if it wasn't going to be. And it will grow. Lots of talented foreign players fell victim to squad building restrictions and went unsold. The league will expand. Maybe to 6 teams, before eventually ending up with 8.

All that's holding it back is how quickly talented Indian players are identified and their skills develop. The cash the BCCI generate from this will supercharge that search. The top players already have access to top coaches and training facilities, but for some, the 10 or 20 lakh they get from this tournament will help them build a future and lifestyle as professional cricketers and generate opportunities for others, which in turn will allow the BCCI to expand the tournament.

Within 10 years, I'd be surprised if the WIPL isn't the biggest women's sports league on the planet.

[head-post]

Beijing launches stimulus measures to boost ailing economy

Chinese stocks rose sharply on Tuesday amid announced central bank measures designed to stem a deterioration in the economic outlook and market sentiment, Chinese media reported.

The measures announced include boosting bank lending, lowering the cost of borrowing up to $5.3 trillion on mortgages, and allowing funds and brokers to use central bank funds to buy stocks.

People’s Bank of China Governor Pan Gongsheng said the People’s Bank of China will reduce by 50 basis points the amount of cash that banks must hold as reserves – known as reserve requirement ratios (RRR). The People’s Bank of China will also cut its key rate by 0.2 percentage points to 1.5 per cent.

Interest rates on existing mortgages will also be cut by an average of 0.5 percentage points, Pan said, which may bring some relief to households but could raise concerns about banks’ profitability. Pan did not specify when the measures would take effect. Gary Ng, senior economist at Natixis, said:

The move probably comes a bit too late, but it is better late than never. With an elevated real interest rate, poor sentiment and no rebound in the property market, China needs a lower-rate environment to boost confidence.

Julian Evans-Pritchard, head of China economics at Capital Economics, said the measures represent “the most significant stimulus package since the early days of the pandemic.”

The People’s Bank of China will allow commercial banks to use 100 per cent of its 300 billion yuan concessional credit line to fund loans they offer to state-owned companies to buy unsold flats as affordable housing, up from 60 per cent now.

As well as using special purpose bonds to buy unused land, it will consider allowing state-owned and commercial banks to lend to good quality corporations to buy land from property developers. The People’s Bank of China will also provide repeat loans “if necessary.”

Read more HERE

[fareterminal]

Book Cheap Flights to Atlanta: Unlock the Gateway to the South

Planning a trip to the bustling city of Atlanta? Known for its rich history, diverse culture, and thriving economy, Atlanta has become a popular destination for travelers from all over the world. Whether you're heading to the city for business, a family vacation, or just a weekend getaway, finding affordable flights can make your trip much more enjoyable. One of the best ways to save money is to book cheap flights to Atlanta by searching online through various flight comparison platforms and travel websites. Taking the time to compare flight prices will allow you to enjoy the journey without breaking the bank.

When planning tobook cheap flights to Atlanta, it's important to consider the best times to travel. Prices for flights to Atlanta can vary greatly depending on the season, so traveling during the off-peak periods can help you secure the lowest fares. Additionally, booking flights in advance or being flexible with your travel dates can further reduce costs. Mid-week flights tend to be less expensive than weekend options, and flying into Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) – one of the busiest airports in the world – provides a wide range of flight options from multiple airlines.

Another great tip is to sign up for airline newsletters and travel alerts. This will keep you informed about any special promotions, flash sales, or discount codes, making it easier to book a cheap flight to Atlanta. Using loyalty points or frequent flyer miles can also help you save significantly on your next trip to this vibrant city.

Breeze Airways Tickets: Affordable and Convenient Travel

When it comes to affordable air travel in the United States, Breeze Airways tickets are becoming a popular choice among travelers. Breeze Airways is known for offering budget-friendly flights with a focus on serving underserved routes and smaller airports across the country. This makes it easier for passengers to access affordable and convenient travel options without the hassle of long layovers or complicated transfers.

If you're looking for a stress-free way to book your flight, Breeze Airways tickets can be easily found online through their official website or various travel agencies. What sets Breeze Airways apart from other low-cost carriers is their emphasis on providing a high level of customer service and flexibility with your travel plans. You can choose from three fare categories: "Nice," "Nicer," and "Nicest," allowing you to customize your travel experience based on your preferences and budget. By selecting the most suitable fare option, you can enjoy a comfortable flight without overpaying for services you don’t need.

For travelers seeking last-minute flights or deals, Breeze Airways also offers competitive pricing on unsold seats, which means you can snag a bargain even if you’ve procrastinated on booking. Additionally, their user-friendly mobile app makes it easy to track flight details, change reservations, and manage your trip, giving you greater control over your travel experience.

Online Flight Ticket Booking USA: Simplifying Travel Plans

Booking flights online has revolutionized the way we travel. Gone are the days of visiting travel agencies or waiting in long lines to purchase flight tickets. Today, online flight ticket booking USA allows travelers to find, compare, and purchase tickets from the comfort of their homes or on the go, all with just a few clicks. This convenience has made air travel more accessible and affordable for millions of passengers.

When bookingonline flight ticket booking USA, you can access a variety of tools and features designed to make the process simple and efficient. You can filter flights by price, duration, airline, and even preferred layover times. In addition, online platforms often provide real-time updates on seat availability and exclusive deals that are not available through traditional booking methods.

Another advantage ofonline flight ticket booking USA is the ability to easily manage your reservations. If you need to make changes to your itinerary, such as rescheduling or upgrading your ticket, these options are typically available online, saving you time and effort. The use of mobile apps also enhances the booking experience by giving you instant access to your flight details, boarding passes, and any changes to your flight status.

Many platforms now also offer price alerts, allowing you to monitor ticket prices over time and book when the fares drop to your desired level. Additionally, some websites offer rewards programs, where you can earn points on purchases that can be redeemed for future discounts.

Book Cheap Flights to Asia: Exploring the Wonders of the East

Asia is one of the most fascinating and diverse continents in the world, offering travelers an array of destinations to explore, from the ancient temples of Thailand to the bustling streets of Tokyo. If you're dreaming of a trip to Asia, the first step is tobook cheap flights to Asia, ensuring that your journey begins on the right foot.

To find book cheap flights to Asia, it’s essential to plan ahead. Airfare to popular destinations such as Japan, China, India, and Thailand can fluctuate depending on the season, so booking early or during sales periods can significantly reduce your overall cost. Many airlines offer special deals during off-peak travel times, and it’s often cheaper to fly mid-week rather than on weekends.

In addition, using flight comparison websites and setting up fare alerts can help you find the best deals. Often, smaller regional airlines also offer competitive prices for flights within Asia, allowing you to further explore the region once you’ve arrived.

Another way tobook cheap flights to Asia is to consider alternative airports. For example, flying into Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, or Singapore can be more affordable than flying directly into cities like Tokyo or Hong Kong. From there, you can easily access budget airlines that serve nearby countries.

Traveling to Asia doesn’t have to be expensive, and by taking advantage of these tips, you can experience the rich cultures, stunning landscapes, and incredible food without stretching your budget.

[robinsceramics]

Summer 2024 shop information

I have a ko-fi shop (https://ko-fi.com/brownlittlerobin/shop)! It is open as of June 2024!

I sometimes do commissions. They are currently closed, but I am always open to discussing the process if you have any questions!

Ask box and direct messages are open for questions and ceramics conversations! Feel free to ask if I can reserve an unsold thing for you; that's pretty easy.

Shipping for most of my pieces is $11 in the USA. I ship out orders within a week of receiving them and refund payments in cases of breakages during shipping. If you live in a place other than the US, just let me know! Odds are that I can ship to you, I just need to check the pricing and logistics before I add your country.

blog tagging system

My main sorting tags are "ceramics", "not ceramics", "sculpture", "vessel", "work in progress", and "shop update". Other tags include the piece's species (e.g. "bunny", "bunny sculpture") and its status: "sold", "unsold" (for sale), and "not for sale". "buddy sighting!" is the tag for photos people share of their creatures after buying them :] I try to keep the posts updated, but sometimes I forget. <3

[likhit-appzotech]

In the present serious market, private ventures need each benefit to remain ahead. One basic region that can fundamentally influence proficiency and productivity is stock administration. A brilliant stock administration framework can smooth out tasks, decrease expenses, and upgrade consumer loyalty. This blog investigates the advantages of savvy stock administration frameworks and how web application improvement assumes a significant part in making these arrangements.

The Significance of Stock Administration for Independent companies Successful stock administration guarantees that a business generally has the right items in the right amounts, limiting the dangers of overloading or stockouts. For private companies, effective stock administration is fundamental in light of the fact that:

Cost Reserve funds: Diminishing abundance stock saves money on capacity costs and limits squander. Further developed Income: Better stock administration implies cash isn't restricted in unsold stock. Consumer loyalty: Reliably having items accessible further develops client faithfulness and fulfillment. Functional Effectiveness: Smoothed out processes save time and decrease blunders. Elements of a Brilliant Stock Administration Framework A brilliant stock administration framework use cutting edge innovation to give continuous perceivability and command over stock. Key highlights include:

Constant Following: Screen stock levels continuously across different areas. Robotized Reordering: Set reorder directs and consequently create buy orders toward forestall stockouts. Examination and Announcing: Gain experiences into deals patterns, stock turnover, and estimate interest. Standardized tag and RFID Joining: Use scanner tag or RFID innovation for speedy and precise stock following. Multi-Channel The board: Oversee stock across various deals channels, both on the web and disconnected. The Job of Web App development Web application improvement is fundamental to making a savvy stock administration framework. An online arrangement offers a few benefits for private companies:

Availability: Access the framework from any gadget with a web association, taking into consideration distant administration. Versatility: Effectively scale the framework as the business develops without the requirement for broad equipment ventures. Incorporation: Coordinate flawlessly with other business frameworks like bookkeeping programming, online business stages, and CRM frameworks. Easy to understand Connection point: A very much planned web application guarantees that the framework is not difficult to utilize, in any event, for those with restricted specialized abilities. Customization: Designer the framework to meet the particular requirements of the business, guaranteeing it adjusts impeccably with functional work processes. Carrying out a Shrewd Stock Administration Framework To carry out a brilliant stock administration framework, private ventures ought to think about the accompanying advances:

Evaluate Needs: Recognize the particular stock administration difficulties and necessities of the business. Pick the Right Arrangement: Select an online stock administration framework that offers the important highlights and versatility. Plan Joining: Guarantee the framework can coordinate with existing business cycles and programming. Train Staff: Give preparing to guarantee that all clients can actually utilize the framework. Screen and Streamline: Routinely audit framework execution and make changes depending on the situation to upgrade stock administration. End A brilliant stock administration framework is a distinct advantage for private companies, offering huge advantages in productivity, cost reserve funds, and consumer loyalty. Web application improvement assumes a vital part in making these frameworks, giving openness, versatility, and coordination capacities. By carrying out a brilliant stock administration framework, independent ventures can smooth out tasks and position themselves for long haul achievement.

Watchwords: web application improvement, stock administration framework, private venture, constant following, computerized reordering, investigation, scanner tag reconciliation, multi-channel the board, versatility, mix, customization.

make a blog Ongoing Joint effort Stage for Remote Groups and catchphrases incorporate web application improvement ChatGPT Constant Cooperation Stage for Remote Groups The ascent of remote work has changed the manner in which organizations work, making continuous joint effort stages fundamental for keeping up with efficiency and collaboration. These stages empower remote groups to cooperate flawlessly, no matter what their actual areas. In this blog, we investigate the advantages of constant coordinated effort stages and the basic job web application advancement plays in making these arrangements.

The Requirement for Constant Cooperation With remote work turning into the standard, organizations face new difficulties in guaranteeing that their groups stay associated and useful. Constant joint effort stages address these difficulties by offering apparatuses and highlights that work with correspondence, project the board, and collaboration. Key advantages include:

Improved Correspondence: Texting, video conferencing, and discussion channels keep colleagues associated. Further developed Venture The executives: Assignment following, shared schedules, and project sheets guarantee everybody is in total agreement. Expanded Efficiency: Cooperative apparatuses like archive sharing and continuous altering smooth out work processes. Adaptability and Openness: Colleagues can team up from anyplace, utilizing any gadget with a web association. Fundamental Elements of an Ongoing Cooperation Stage A strong ongoing cooperation stage ought to incorporate a few vital highlights to successfully uphold remote groups:

Texting and Visit: Empower speedy and proficient correspondence among colleagues. Video Conferencing: Work with eye to eye gatherings and conversations, fundamental for keeping a unique interaction. Record Sharing and Continuous Altering: Permit colleagues to share archives and team up on them progressively. Undertaking and Venture The executives: Give instruments to allotting assignments, setting cutoff times, and following advancement. Coordinated Schedules: Sync timetables and plan gatherings or cutoff times easily. Notice and Cautions: Keep colleagues informed about updates, changes, and significant occasions. The Job of Web Application Improvement Web application improvement is essential in making viable ongoing coordinated effort stages. This is the way it contributes:

Cross-Stage Similarity: Web applications guarantee that the stage is open from any gadget, whether it's a work area, tablet, or cell phone. Adaptability: As the group develops, the web application can undoubtedly scale to oblige more clients and extra highlights. Continuous Updates: Web applications give constant information synchronization, guaranteeing that all colleagues have the most recent data. Mix: Flawlessly incorporate with different apparatuses and frameworks like email, CRM, and project the board programming. Security: Carry out powerful safety efforts to safeguard delicate information and keep up with client protection. Client Experience: A very much planned web application guarantees an easy to use interface, making it simple for colleagues to really embrace and utilize the stage. Carrying out an Ongoing Cooperation Stage To carry out an ongoing cooperation stage for remote groups, organizations ought to think about the accompanying advances:

Recognize Needs: Evaluate the particular joint effort needs and difficulties of the group. Select the Right Stage: Pick a stage that offers the fundamental highlights and can scale with the group. Coordinate with Existing Frameworks: Guarantee that the stage can incorporate with the apparatuses and frameworks currently being used. Train the Group: Give preparing and assets to assist with joining individuals take advantage of the stage. Screen and Upgrade: Routinely survey stage use and make acclimations to further develop proficiency and adequacy. End A continuous joint effort stage is fundamental for remote groups, offering devices that upgrade correspondence, project the executives, and efficiency. Web application improvement is critical to making these stages, giving versatility, incorporation, and constant capacities. By executing a constant cooperation stage, organizations can guarantee their remote groups stay associated, useful, and connected with, regardless of where they are found.

Watchwords: web application improvement, constant coordinated effort, remote groups, texting, video conferencing, document sharing, task the board, project the executives, cross-stage similarity, ongoing updates, reconciliation, client experience.

make a blog Online business Site with Customized Item Suggestions and catchphrases incorporate web application improvement ChatGPT Online business Site with Customized Item Suggestions In the quickly developing universe of online business, personalization has turned into a vital component for progress. Clients expect fitted shopping encounters that take special care of their singular inclinations and requirements. Carrying out customized item suggestions on a web based business site can essentially upgrade client fulfillment, increment deals, and cultivate client dedication. This blog investigates the significance of customized suggestions and how web application advancement can work with this component.

The Significance of Customized Item Proposals Customized item proposals are something other than a good to-have include; they are fundamental for present day online business destinations. Here's the reason:

Upgraded Client Experience: Customized suggestions make the shopping experience seriously captivating and significant, assisting clients with finding items they are probably going to buy. Expanded Deals: By displaying items that match client inclinations, web based business locales can support deals and normal request esteem. Client Maintenance: Customized encounters increment consumer loyalty and devotion, empowering rehash buys. Decreased Skip Rates: When clients see important items, they are bound to remain on the site and investigate further. Key Elements of Customized Item Suggestions To successfully carry out customized item suggestions, an online business site ought to incorporate a few key elements:

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Fisker has one major objector to its Ocean SUV firesale

One major dissenter threatens to upend Fisker’s apparent best chance at offloading its unsold EVs, a deal that would keep the startup’s bankruptcy proceeding alive and pave the way for paying pack creditors some of what they’re owed. The objection to the sale comes from the office of the U.S. Trustee, an arm of the […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. Source:…

[influencermagazineuk]

China's Consumer Price Growth Declines Ahead of Communist Party Economic Meeting

China's consumer price growth decelerated in June while factory prices eased but remained in deflationary territory, raising hopes for stronger economic stimulus measures at an upcoming Communist Party policy meeting. According to official data from the National Bureau of Statistics released on Wednesday, consumer prices rose by 0.2% year-on-year in June, down from a 0.3% increase in May and below the 0.4% growth forecasted by a Bloomberg poll of analysts. The producer price index fell by 0.8% year-on-year last month, an improvement from May's 1.4% contraction. Although the factory gate price index has strengthened over the past three months and met analysts' expectations, the data highlights ongoing concerns about weak consumer spending in the world's second-largest economy. “The risk of deflation has not faded in China,” noted Zhiwei Zhang, chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management, pointing to continued weak domestic demand. Falling food costs significantly impacted consumer prices. Fresh vegetable prices dropped by 7.3% year-on-year in June, while fruit prices fell by 8.7% and beef prices declined by 13.4%. Low business confidence has left Beijing heavily reliant on exports and industrial output to drive economic growth. However, this strategy is becoming less viable as trade partners, including the EU and the US, push back against a surge of cheap goods, accusing China of dumping. The EU recently imposed new import tariffs of up to 38% on Chinese electric vehicles. Even developing countries with typically favorable trade relations with China, such as Mexico and Brazil, have imposed new levies on Chinese steel products. This growing global backlash has prompted Beijing's policymakers to explore alternative ways to support the economy, which is also hindered by a prolonged property sector slowdown. Ahead of the Chinese Communist Party’s third plenum, a key economic policy meeting scheduled for next week, Premier Li Qiang has been conducting a listening tour to gather input from Chinese economists, entrepreneurs, and foreign businesses. However, experts argue that Beijing's current policies have not been sufficient to stabilize economic growth. A government fund to purchase unsold housing inventory has not stopped the decline in real estate prices, and a “trade-in” program for home appliances and other durable goods has had limited success due to restrictive conditions. Top Chinese economists are optimistic that President Xi Jinping will introduce new policies at the upcoming plenum to boost domestic demand, including enhancing the social safety net as part of his "common prosperity" initiative. Analysts suggest that anticipated rate cuts by the US Federal Reserve, potentially as early as September, would give the People’s Bank of China more leeway to loosen monetary policy without putting pressure on the currency. “We believe real interest rates are too high given the current state of the economy and think that the economy would benefit more from rate cuts,” said Lynn Song, chief China economist at ING. Read the full article

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What I got from Too Good to Go in April 2024

What I got from Too Good to Go in April 2024. #only4 #saladbags #stouffvillemetro #shawarmabeef #timmies

The surprise bags I got in April 2024 Pick up a blind surprise bag from Too Good To Go and save unsold surplus food from going to waste.  Enjoy discounted food from participating restaurants and stores! I didn’t reserve many bags this month because we were out of the country for a week.  I originally would have Continue reading What I got from Too Good to Go in April 2024

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Hotel Reservation System

Hotel Reservation System

Travelopro provides an online web-based hotel reservation system all over the world. Our hotel reservation system allows you to start online hotel reservation portal and customer management.

The application is created to simplify the work of hotel reservation online. We develop hotel booking engine that supports B2B, B2C and also B2B2C business processes of travel companies. It provides users a unique, user friendly and easy to use interface that improves the way people use the web today.

Hotel Reservation System is a technology suite that allows you to accept direct bookings through your website and various distribution channels. It is a software tool that displays your live rates and inventory in real time, across all of your channels and allows guests to select the dates for their trip and finalize their reservation.

Increase your occupancy and revenue by using the #1 hotel reservation system. We develop hotel management software for travel agencies, tour operators, travel companies to manage hotel inventory & rates on online travel portals.

Our online hotel reservation software offers comprehensive & advanced hotel search ability on various parameters (city, room types, star, prices, and so on). You can increase your business growth with the help of Travelopro B2B, B2C Hotel Reservation System.

Travelopro develops hotel reservation system that supports various B2B, B2C modules including CRS booking engine, extranet system and connected to multiple hotel xml suppliers to serve your business requirements and business processing.

Our services help to build an impactful presence for your Hotel in the virtual world, create greater visibility, and great ease of transaction which results in lower unsold Inventory through greater online revenue and profits.

Powerful Hotel Reservation System to Simplify Your Hotel Reservations

Travelopro is an Award-winning travel technology company that provides a hotel reservation system to travel agencies, tour operators and travel companies. Hotel Reservation System is a perfect strategy for travel agencies, tour operators and travel companies.

With this system, global travel companies offer their clients to choose top hotel rooms, nationally as well as internationally Hotel Booking Engine is connected with the top hotel API's and this integration is used to provide the best search results of hotels.

Our hotel reservation system is becoming popular as it enables the travel and tourism industry to provide booking through the internet across various destinations globally. Our hotel reservation system is a technology suite that allows you to accept direct bookings through your website and through your various distribution channels.

It is often known as an online booking engine or booking systems more generally. It should integrate easily with your existing infrastructure, and allow you to automate most of the hotel booking administrative tasks at your property. Our hotel reservation system allows a guest to plan their own trip at their convenience.

It is a software tool that displays your live rates and inventory in real-time, across all of your channels, and allows guests to select the dates for their trip and finalize their reservation. Our hotel reservation system is a software application that is implemented by hotels to allow guests to create secure online reservations.

Our hotel reservation system can be synced, not only with your current website but also with any website. This allows guests to reserve rooms in a way that is convenient for them via social media. The objectives of the automated Hotel Reservation System are to simplify the day to day processes of the hotel.

The system will be able to handle many services to take care of all customers in a quick manner. The system should be user appropriate, easy to use, provide easy recovery of errors and have an overall end-user high subjective satisfaction.

Offer Your Customers a Pool of Choices in Hotels by Implementing Our Fully Integrated Hotel Booking Engine

Travelopro specialized Hotel Reservation System Company providing Hotel Booking Engine at affordable rates. We offer an online web-based hotel reservation system for the hotel industry for service providers.

Our Hotel Reservation System is designed to simplify the booking process over online and it allows you to get on with running your business. Our system is easy to use, revolutionary Online Hotel Reservation System that enables the hotel to take full advantage of the power of the Internet while increasing the flexibility to maximize revenues.

Our Online Hotel Reservation System is a simple user-friendly system that enables your guests to reserve rooms instantly through your website after verifying the availability of rooms. The reservation manager of your hotel can easily manage and monitor the Online Hotel Reservation System.

Our Online Hotel Reservation System facilitates your guests with different payment options like Credit and Debit cards. All reservations are updated online and intimated to the reservation manager through email.

Our system integrated with different online payment providers, which gives both you and your guest the convenience of secure card transfers. Our hotel reservation system provides integrated hotel reservation software to the clients globally.

Our hotel reservation engine offers travel agencies, travel companies, and tour operators to manage their online booking of hotel effectively. Our online hotel reservation system is the best platform, as it adds many benefits and you can easily book the hotel or room through the internet.

It discovers more information about a hotel which is situated in a particular area and you can also select a hotel according to your demands and choice. Our hotel reservation system enables guests to schedule dates and length of stay, room selection, extras, and payment all in one place.

Most of the tourists can book the hotel from the airport online. It provides users a unique, intuitive and easy to use interface that improves the way people use the web today. Through personalization and rich features, this Reservation System enhances the entire web experience.

Travelopro is a groundbreaking online booking engine with an array of features to maximize performance and increase the revenue of hotels. Our Smart Booking Engine is a high-end seamless Hotel Booking System with multiple features that save your time, money and efforts.

Our online booking engine that drives your online distribution business by providing an efficient and flexible platform to support you, and brings user-friendly user experience to your customers.

With our cutting-edge technology and state-of-the-art security system, users are able to fully manage the rate, inventory, customize promotion, members, payment method, content, reports, etc. easily and with total confidence.

Our main aim is to outfit the hotel's website with an online reservation facility, enabling guests to receive an instant online room confirmation within minutes through a secured web environment.

Our suite of data-driven solutions delivers the knowledge you need to acquire the right guests at the right price and retain guest relationships for repeat business.  All solutions in the suite are fully interconnected, mutually supportive and uniquely designed to make you successful by maximizing revenue for your hotel.

Use our suites to effortlessly and cost-effectively maximize hotel room bookings, manage channels effectively, make better revenue management decisions and continuously know, acquire, convert, and retain hotel guests.

Our hotel reservation system is designed to enhance your online sales with user management and monitoring capabilities across multiple user levels. The software provides integrated end-to-end solutions that help in single window access to the needed information and execution of the tasks.

At Travelopro, we customize travel booking portal development software for your business. Our hotel reservation software integrates various GDS, APIs, and XML for flight bookings to assist the customers to meet the challenges of this highly competitive global industry.

We have been a pioneer in delivering best in class hotel reservation systems to global travel agents, tour operators, and travel companies. Being a leader in travel technology, we deliver online reservation systems, which set the benchmark globally.

Being a leading travel technology company, we develop comprehensive booking engines by integrating GDS (Amadeus, Galileo, Sabre) and hotel consolidators like GTA Travel, Hotelbeds, Hotelspro, including several others.

Travelopro is a trusted leader in the hotel industry for delivering one of the best Hotel Reservation Systems that offers customized and personalized booking engine for hotel's website to cater your needs individually according to your hotel's convenience and preference.

Our advanced, all-in-one reservation management solution designed to streamline business operations and improve the guest experience. We provide highly configurable to meet industry-specific needs to run your business efficiently and profitably.

Our Hotel Management System is used over many hotels across cities to save time and money. Our Hotel Management System allows properties to create multiple room categories with different room rates, meal plans, and room occupancy status.

Our Hotel Management System works with your solutions to make you more effective. The inventory in the hotel management software automatically updates on all the channels. All bookings from the website are visible in the hotel management system and the inventory from the website always syncs the hotel's inventory with the system when a client searches for a room.

Any updates made in the hotel management system are instantly synced to the Chain hotel login and vice-versa. So, both the individual hotels and the chain always have control. Our online hotel management software helps in consolidating all the online bookings on the same dashboard be it from the online travel portals or aggregators, the brand website of the property or the meta-search engines.

The front office manager should also be able to make out from which source the booking has come so that he can have complete control of his bookings. Our best hotel management software manages all day-to-day tasks, such as responding to inquiries, confirm & tentative reservations, cancellations, and No-Shows.

It should integrate with a channel manager so that the online distribution to travel portals and aggregators can be taken care of. The agents should have access to real time availability and they should be able to sell the rooms at their pre-defined rates.

Key-Features of Hotel Reservation System

Fast, Flexible booking engine

Easy to book and use online hotel reservation system

Save time & money

User-friendly Interface

Integrated Payment Gateway

Multi-language support

Google map integration

Benefits of Our Hotel Reservation System

Real-time inventory access to multiple sales channel

Provides powerful hotel reservation system to simplify hotel reservation

CRS/CRM system for Hotel Rooms

B2B & B2C Hotel Reservation System

Automated booking process

Advanced reporting

Hotel details, description, room pricing details, facilities, photo gallery more in details

Unlimited room type, room numbers and multi-currency Support

Email Alert on room's reservation

Increases multi-tasking by managing several tasks simultaneously

For more details, Pls visit our Website:

[socalledblogger]

why you keep buying books you don’t read Start your side hustle with Shopify: https://ift.tt/wK6F80m Why are buying books and reading books two different hobbies? Why is your to be read (TBR) list only ever getting longer? And what does all that have to do with book publishers destroying thousands of books every year? In this video, Sabrina explores the world of Booktok, bookstores, and publishing, to figure out why we keep buying books we don't read. And yes, she does read ACOTAR and Fourth Wing in the process. SUPPORT US ON PATREON https://ift.tt/TNP2Uop SUBSCRIBE TO OUR MONTHLY NEWSLETTER New issue with book buying advice comes out on Tuesday Mar 19! https://ift.tt/PzcXZqy BUY THE BOOKMARK https://ift.tt/mWLV7N6 SOCIAL MEDIA Sabrina Twitter: https://twitter.com/nerdyandquirky Instagram: https://ift.tt/aZeW6QX Melissa Twitter: https://twitter.com/mehlizfern Instagram: https://ift.tt/dDpOAFL Taha Twitter: https://twitter.com/khanstopme Instagram: https://ift.tt/REvjWTf CREDITS Produced by Sabrina Cruz Research Assistance by Jananie K. Velu from @thisstoryaintover Video Editing by Joe Trickey Motion Design by Sabrina Cruz Sound Design by Joe Trickey Special Thanks to: Patrick Hempelmann from BMV Books Chris Krawczyk from Little Ghosts Books Kariza Santos from @LifeOfRiza MUSIC Epidemic Sound. Get started today using our affiliate link. https://ift.tt/zAChPQ2 RECOMMENDED READING No specific recommendations but check out BMV Books and Little Ghosts Books for some great options! https://ift.tt/FGQtz6T https://ift.tt/RnXfZLv TIMESTAMPS 00:00 realizing i have a problem, in real time 00:44 the ikea kallax system system has failed me 00:55 of course i made this into an existential crisis 01:26 forcing myself to read (again) 01:35 eat your heart out, storygraph 02:46 what did i learn 03:03 oh, it's that i'm BASIC 03:17 nvm, maybe i'm NUANCED 04:04 i read the ACOTAR series (derogatory) 04:42 how BookTok changed publishing 05:52 how BookTok changed my reading 06:28 wait but why is BookTok so efficient? 06:51 how traditional publishing works 08:13 the benefits of BookTok 09:54 trying to justify my problem instead of solving it 11:00 this is an extended metaphor, trust me, it pays off 12:00 what happens to unsold books 13:35 just be glad i didn't show you a supply-demand graph 14:25 please don't judge me 14:37 the metaphor is about to pay off 15:11 SEE! 17:01 now i'm just restating the metaphor because... it was very extended ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Welcome to the joke under the fold! In case you don't want to buy books, you could try making a reservation at the local library. Just be careful, they tend to be fully booked! Leave a comment with the word BOOK to let me know you were here ;-) via YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bh3EnIPVwIE