This year's Emerald City Con was... an extraordinary experience.

Truthfully, I'm still trying to get my head wrapped around some of it. Doing our Artist's Alley table as a fundraiser for the Cartooning Class was very much a last-minute, spur-of-the-moment decision, we weren't organized about it at all... and I was very moved, and a little awed, at how well the kids came through. Not just the current students but many of our grads, as well.

The experience could be summed up in this exchange between our friend Lorinda and myself. At one point, I shook my head and muttered, "This is so amazing... I mean, teaching, it's like putting a note in a bottle and throwing it in the ocean, you never really know how it's going to work out."

Rin replied, "Well, you sure had a lot of bottles come back this weekend."

We took a lot of pictures and I think I'll just run those for you and talk a little bit about each one.

*

This is what it looked like before we opened.

And another.

This is the last time we would experience quiet until Sunday evening. LATE Sunday evening. My ears are still ringing a little.

Outside, the crowd was milling around panting to get in.

Clearly, convention security was going to be overtaxed so the stormtroopers thought they'd assist with crowd control.

And then we were off....

This may give you a little bit of an idea of the swarms that descended once the doors were open. Saturday, in particular, was Hell Day.

Fortunately, we had a great crew. I honestly don't know how Julie and I ever used to do this by ourselves. It takes a teenage metabolism to keep up with the Saturday hordes at a convention.

In the rear we have Rachel, Aja, and that's Katrina under the mop, with our friend Rin in the front. Rachel decided to be Rogue again this year, as you can see. Katrina wanted to dress up too but couldn't decide on an outfit (she'd brought a couple.) This is the one she started with, a character of her own named Connor, but Connor only lasted till noon or so.

Once again this year, we won the lottery by having awesome neighbors. One one side we had Jeffrey Ellis and the crew from Cloudscape Comics, a small-press artists-collective outfit based in Vancouver, British Columbia.

On the other side we had Two Percent Solution.

They do a raunchy humor self-published book and a podcast as well.

I'm so embarrassed I can't remember their names -- I know I introduced myself at some point, but I couldn't really hear them very well. The echo chamber in the hall, once the crowds were in, made it nearly impossible to converse on Saturday. But they were great, swore up and down they loved being next to us and claimed we brought them a lot of extra traffic. They were especially hilarious about pretending to almost-swear in front of the kids but they never actually did.

Since we were doing a for-real fundraiser, and thus actually accepting money, our setup changed a little this year.

The idea was that we had students on the left, alumni on the right. As people would approach, the kids would offer them a giveaway book, and if they stopped, then they'd volunteer to sign it.

Ben, Marie, and Eileen, working hard.

Then Katie or myself would explain about the budget shortfall and collecting for donations, and add that anything over $10 got you a custom sketch from an alum. More often than not, they'd at least stop and admire the sample sketches we had up, and put a couple of bucks in the box.

Here's a customer getting The Spiel. Marie, especially, was really good at explaining to people what we were doing.

Many did in fact commission sketches.

Once we were set up it went fairly smoothly despite being a bit cramped, up against the wall as we were.

That's me and my boss, Katie. For the last seven years I've exhorted my various supervisors at school to come to the convention and really see how hard the kids work, but this was the first time anyone took me up on it. It really was a lot of fun having Katie there as she knew nothing about comics, conventions, or geek culture in general. But she adapted quickly. Watching her take in the experience was a lot of fun, and by the end of her day there she was a complete convert. At one point Katie was even speculating on the possibility of doing this kind of thing more often and wondering what other shows there were that we could attend as a class. The Stumptown Festival in Portland, especially, was a possibility we talked about quite a bit. (Katie was also interested in hearing about WonderCon and APE, but I told her, "Baby steps. I'm only just now getting to a place where I think I know how to get us to THIS show.")

The alumni were kept very busy sketching all day both days.

Fortunately they love to draw but my GOD they worked hard. I wish I'd gotten more shots of their work, it was of an extraordinarily high level, especially the high school kids. I was so proud of all of them and the way they've all kept learning and growing as artists, years after leaving my charge.

I did get a few. Here's one of Aja's.

And this is one of Katrina's custom commissions. She asked the lady what she wanted and the woman said, "Well, I like octopuses." (Yes, I know it's octopi but that's what she said.)

For a second I thought Katrina was going to be stuck but then she blew out this caricature of the woman herself with an octopus on her head. Yeah, the kids are THAT good.

Some people were kind of crass about it. This mother, especially, was really annoying. First she wanted to know what she'd be getting for her ten dollars.

It takes a special kind of chutzpah to haggle with a sixteen-year-old volunteer over your CHARITABLE ACT.

Katrina rather helplessly pointed to the samples, but it developed that this woman wanted to see the actual sketch before she would pay for it.

And this woman wanted something special, too-- a caricature of her two boys... an action pose of the two of them in their martial arts class. Geez lady, demanding much?

Here's Katrina working on the commission -- I cropped her out, but cheapskate Mom is hovering just out of frame, watching like a hawk to make sure she gets her money's worth.

Katrina was amazingly diplomatic about it. I thought Rin was going to go ballistic on the woman and I had to squelch a few sharp remarks myself. She deserved some kind of smack.

The two boys with the final product. I think they were a little embarrassed over how their mother treated Katrina.

Fortunately, the finished product satisfied everyone and we got the ten bucks.

But most of our visitors were much nicer. You remember Rachel's shot of the X-Men at the beach?

Guess who got that one.

Yeah, that's Matt Fraction, proud new owner of Rachel's X-Men Beach Party. This may be my favorite photo from the show. Only in comics do moments like this happen: my former student Rachel, the world's most ardent fan of the X-Men, posing with Matt Fraction, current writer of the X-Men comic, who's just told her that her cartoon is brilliant, that he would love to do a scene of the team at the beach and that she's caught all their personalities perfectly.

Matt was great with all the kids. He signed autographs, talked with them about comics, and generally was awesome. Here he is signing an autograph for Emma.

It was only a couple of minutes out of his day but I know how hard it can be to get away from your table when you're working a show, and it really meant a lot to the students to have a pro take such an interest. Even my students, whose comics fandom usually begins and ends with manga, know who Iron Man and the X-Men are. They were thrilled that he stopped by.

Michael Alan Nelson also visited our table briefly.

The kids loved him too, though they had only the vaguest idea of who he was -- I explained he worked for Boom! Comics and I think many of them had the idea he worked on the Muppets or something, since that was always where the line was over there. I enjoyed getting to meet him at last -- I interviewed him here a while back, but it was via e-mail and we'd never met in person. I am a big fan of his Fall Of Cthulhu series, and I got Swordsmith Assassin at the show as well, since Chip Mosher sent us the first issue for review and I liked it quite a lot, I'd been meaning to pick it up for a while now... though I forgot to ask Mr. Nelson to sign it. Too busy chitchatting.

I was mostly at our table all weekend, but Julie got out some. There was no way she was missing Leonard Nimoy.

She was actually in panels for most of Saturday, she also went to see Wil Wheaton and Stan Lee. Of them all, I think Julie was the most impressed with Nimoy's, she said he was "inspiring."

As for me, well, I was enjoying my time at the table because it was turning into old home week. We had many visitors from past classes -- Amethyst, Jessica, Shane, Andrew, and Jay, among others. Some I hardly recognized because they're, you know, adults now. (The last time I saw Jay he was a scrawny little soft-spoken kid. Today he's in his twenties, six feet tall and ponytailed, very outgoing with an infectious laugh. And of course his voice is an octave lower.)

Some even volunteered to put in some time sketching for us, which melted me. Lindon popped up out of nowhere and immediately wanted to put in some table time. Of course I agreed.

A lot of the kids dressed up this year, too. Saturday Lindon was in street clothes, but Sunday she was Pikachu.

I took this one just because it made me laugh.

That's right, Pikachu supports Cartooning in schools!

This is Lindon and Devon. I shot this because when Lindon has her head down -- even today, she always draws with her nose to the paper like that, it can't be comfortable but she always has to get way down there -- anyway, it tickles me because it looks like Pikachu is sitting at the table.

Lots of parents volunteered time too.

That's Marie, Ben, and Eileen, under the watchful eye of Gus' mother Marilyn. She looks a little annoyed, not because of the three kids but because her own son has abandoned his post again.

I get three kinds of students -- the ones who want to write, the ones who want to draw, and the ones who just want to geek out and be surrounded by comics. Gus is one of the geeks. He will produce drawings if you lean on him, but for him the point of being at a con is to get cool stuff. All I ask of the kids is to put in a ninety-minute shift at our table on the day they attend, but Gus could hardly bring himself to even do that much, he'd brought money and it was burning a hole in his pocket. First it was Leonard Nimoy's autograph -- even if you brought your own item for him to sign it was still a wince-worthy forty dollars -- and then he negotiated an advance on his allowance to go buy some comics.

Marilyn has always been one of my favorite parents and her reaction to this was completely charming. She ordered Gus to stay at the table and do his job. Then she went off to go get her son's comics herself. Naturally, not being an expert, she consulted me.

"Randy's Readers," I told her. "He's your guy. He sells comics that aren't collectible, just in average shape... his market is people that don't really Collect with a capital C, but only want to read comics. If I ever get a chance to take a break I was thinking of stopping over there myself, to be honest."

Marilyn agreed that was the place to go and the girls were exhorting me to take some kind of a break, and Marie wanted to come too, so off we went.

Marilyn explained that Gus wanted war comics. "So violent," she said, ruefully.

Gus did the tank for the group poster. He's all about the war comics.

I laughed. "Well, I grew up on blood and thunder myself, it's not all that damaging really. The key is that there has to be a story, I try to make sure they aren't just doing a videogame shoot-'em-up. There's a fine old tradition of war comics that did great stories, Sgt. Rock, G.I. Combat, Unknown Soldier.... we'll find him some of the good stuff."

Marilyn perked up. "Yes, I know Gus liked that Unknown Soldier book you loaned him. I was going to try and find some of those."

I brought this to class to show the boys that even hardcore shoot-em-ups still had to have a STORY. For Gus it was love at first sight.

Mission defined, we now moved with a clear purpose. Once we were at Randy's booth Randy himself stepped in and was very helpful, explaining to Marilyn that there was the Unknown Soldier series from Star-Spangled War Storiesand then there were the ones in his own book.

"What's the difference?" Marilyn wanted to know.

"Later ones are probably cheaper," I told her, smiling. "But I don't think Gus will care that much, he'd enjoy any of them."

As for me, in showing the various war series to Marilyn I stumbled across this one and decided I couldn't pass it up for six bucks.

Sorry, Gus, I got this one.

Our Army At War #269, a reprint of stories featuring work by Joe Kubert, George Evans, John Severin, Russ Heath, and even Mort Drucker (!) I could spend hours just looking at the pictures in this one.

I also fell for a couple of Superboy Giant reprint collections from my childhood that I'd been trying to replace for a while. Mostly these days I'm a trade paperback guy, but nostalgia can still get me.

Marie said curiously, "I know who Superman is, but I never heard of Superboy."

"It's like Smallville, only he actually wears the costume," I heard myself say, and suddenly felt a hundred years old as i realized there's probably two generations of schoolkids now who know Smallville as 'their' Superman the way I think of Bates-Maggin-Swan Bronze-Age Superman as 'mine.'

When we got back I told Gus he had the coolest mother ever. "At your age I'd have killed for a mom who said, 'you finish your work, I'll go make sure you get your comics.' That's unheard of."

Gus blushed, grinned sheepishly, and gave his mother a hug. Marilyn beamed and said, "I have my moments."

There wasn't time for me to do a whole lot of shopping -- there never is -- but Rin found a dealer who had a big box full of graphic novels and trades for $5 and I fell for a couple of those, too.

Empire is one of those late 1970s Byron Preiss productions where he was deliberately trying to move comics into a bookstore market -- about twenty-five years too soon, it turned out, but he produced some handsome books when he was trying. This one was an original piece by Samuel Delany and Howard Chaykin, hoping to scoop up some of that newly-minted SF audience that Star Wars created back then. I'd never actually read it and I've always been curious about it. Holliday I've never heard of, but I'm always up for a Western comic, and for a $5 trade paperback it's hard to go wrong.

Most of our shopping, though, we tried to do in Artist's Alley itself as much as possible. We like to support the creators. Julie picked up the new Muppet book from Boom! where Amy Mebberson was -- you should pardon the expression -- doing a BOOMing business.

Possibly the most popular artist at the show this year.

She was kept busy all weekend. A lovely lady, she was great with all the kids that came up to her and sketched Kermits and Animals and Miss Piggys till her hands were raw, most likely. I don't think a single kid went away empty-handed.

And I made it a point to pick up a bunch of stuff from Camilla d'Errico on Sunday morning. I was able to catch her a few minutes before the show opened, when it was actually possible to have a conversation.

Camilla's a favorite with my kids.

Camilla has been a great friend to my students for many years now... they don't remember her name but they all know the Awesome Manga Lady From Vancouver. I bought about $25 worth of stuff from her because A) I can use it in class and B) she deserves to be rich and I do what I can. She had a line all weekend but I did get to chat with her for a few minutes on Sunday morning. Largely on what became the typical Sunday conversation topic in Artist's Alley, "Great to see you, sorry I didn't come by earlier, we were stuck at the table.... My God! Wasn't yesterday hell? How many people did YOU get?" Everyone loved the increase in business but hated fighting through the crowds on Saturday.

Sunday afternoon I did get around a little bit. I got a couple of books signed from Kurt Busiek and Len Wein, and I had a flattering couple of minutes with Les McClaine, original artist on The Middleman. He saw my badge and said, "Hey, Greg Hatcher! I love your column!"

Seriously. I was shocked speechless. I spluttered and fumfuh'd and blushed like a schoolgirl, finally managing to choke out that I was a huge fan of his, that my students and I all adored The Middleman. This pleased him, and we agreed that it was a shame it didn't last but it was great to have something that cool exist at all.

And I got to say hi to Pete and Rebecca Woods, from Periscope Studios. We hadn't seen Rebecca in about six years, she hadn't come to ECCC in a while, so it was great to catch up. Rebecca immediately wanted to know how Brianna was doing, since when Bri was my student years ago she practically camped out at the Periscope Studios table, and Rebecca happily adopted her. I told her that Bri wanted desperately to come this year but she had finals up at Bellingham, she was in college up at Western. Then we had a mutual groan about how old we are getting.

Because Bri couldn't make it to the convention this year, we wanted to at least let her know she was missed.

When I got the idea to recruit additional Cartooning alumni to do charity sketches for our fundraiser, my first two thoughts were Brianna and Nadine. They're both in college now, and they've kept up with their comics work as well. They were pretty amazing in the seventh grade, and they've only gotten better.

Here's what Bri was doing when she was in my class...

...and here's a more current piece.

Sadly, Brianna had finals or she'd have been there with bells on, she assured us.

Nadine had finals too but she did make it down, which delighted me. She was probably the single most gifted student I've ever had. Her serial "Mermaid's Touch" still gets gasps of awe when the kids go through the old books.

In fact, when Katrina joined my class when she was in middle school, she was so inspired by Nadine's work that she took the same pen name, "KittyBell."

Catherine Ashton, la ministre des affaires étrangères de l’Union, soucieuse de montrer qu’elle avait bien reçu le message des ministres de la Défense après avoir séché leur réunion informelle de Palma de Majorque, s’était ralliée à l’idée de créer un véritable conseil des ministres de la Défense. En effet, jusqu’à présent, ces derniers se réunissaient uniquement de temps à autre dans le cadre d’un Conseil des ministres des Affaires dit « jumbo » et n’avaient donc pas de véritable autonomie.

Il est désormais acquis que lors du prochain conseil « jumbo », le 26 avril à Luxembourg, les ministres des Affaires étrangères voteront (à la majorité qualifiée) la création d’une nouvelle formation du Conseil des ministres, le Conseil des ministres de la Défense, ce qui marque un progrès fondamental dans la mise en place d’une Europe de la défense. Pour mesurer le chemin parcouru, il faut rappeler que le 17 novembre dernier, Javier Solana, le prédécesseur de Lady Ashton, peu suspect d’euroscepticisme, avait jugé la création d’un tel Conseil « trop difficile »...

La crise grecque est-elle en passe de se transformer en crise européenne ? Tout l’indique : Angela Merkel, la chancelière allemande, a brutalement durci le ton, mercredi, devant le Bundestag, en exigeant quasiment une sortie de la Grèce de la zone euro si elle n’est pas capable de redresser seule ses finances publiques et en rejetant avec morgue toute critique de sa politique économique : « nous n’allons pas abandonner nos atouts au prétexte que nos produits sont peut-être plus demandés que ceux d’autres pays (...) Un gouvernement économique européen doit s’aligner sur les États membres les plus rapides et les meilleurs, pas sur les plus faibles ». Ses partenaires, et en particulier Paris, continuent, eux, à affirmer leur soutien à Athènes et estiment que Berlin a une part de responsabilité non négligeable dans la crise grecque et dans les difficultés de ses voisins en menant une politique économique non coopérative. Les points de vue semblent désormais inconciliables, les préoccupations de politique intérieure semblant l’emporter en Allemagne. Pourtant, la crise grecque semblait sur le point de se terminer, après l’adoption par le gouvernement de Georges Papandréou, d’un plan de rigueur sans précédent et le soutien affiché, lundi, par ses partenaires de la zone euro : « toutes les questions politiques (à une intervention de l’Union) ont trouvé une réponse », affirmait ainsi Jean-Claude Juncker, le président de l’Eurogroupe. La zone euro va-t-elle résister à ce cavalier seul allemand ? Décryptage.

·    Pourquoi Angela Merkel durcit-elle le ton ?

·    Les Européens sont-ils vraiment prêts à aider la Grèce ?

Depuis le Conseil européen des chefs d’État et de gouvernement du 11 février dernier, les vingt-sept répètent sur tous les tons qu’ils sont prêts à acheter de la dette grecque en cas de nécessité afin de desserrer le collet des taux d’intérêt très élevés que réclament les marchés pour prêter à la Grèce et qui, en année pleine, risque de lui couter 0,5 % de son PIB. Certes, Berlin n’a pas été facile à convaincre et, selon certaines sources, Nicolas Sarkozy, le chef de l’État français, a dû tordre le bras d’Angela Merkel avant le sommet du 11 février pour qu’elle accepte d’afficher sa solidarité. Depuis, les réunions techniques se sont multipliées afin de mettre au point un mécanisme d’intervention qui ne contrevienne pas aux traités européens et en particulier à l’article qui interdit à un pays de la zone euro de prendre à sa charge la dette d’un de ses partenaires. Lundi 15 mars, les ministres des Finances de la zone euro ont ainsi écarté, à la demande allemande, la possibilité que la Commission puisse emprunter sur les marchés avec la garantie des États membres. On semble se diriger vers des prêts bilatéraux coordonnés par la Commission. Ni le montant (même si la somme de 20 à 25 milliards d’euros est avancée dans les couloirs), ni le taux d’intérêt de ces prêts n’ont encore été arrêtés. La mise en Å“uvre de ce mécanisme ne pourra être décidée que par le Conseil européen : il sera, en tous les cas, à l’ordre du jour du sommet des 25 et 26 mars.

·    Pourquoi ne pas laisser le Fonds monétaire international (FMI) intervenir ?

Au départ, ce sont les Allemands qui se sont opposés à une telle possibilité, alors même que les Vingt-sept détiennent plus de quotes-parts au sein du FMI que les Américains. Pour Berlin, qui partage la même monnaie qu’Athènes, cela équivaudrait en fait à une intervention dans ses affaires internes... Jean-Claude Trichet, le président de la BCE, a lui aussi jugé que l’appel au FMI serait une « humiliation » puisque cela montrerait que la zone euro est incapable de régler en interne ses problèmes. Est-il, par exemple, envisageable que le FMI vole au secours de la Californie, entend-on à Francfort ? Mais tout le monde, au sein de la zone euro, ne partage pas cet avis : ainsi, la Belgique ne voit pas pourquoi la zone euro se priverait du FMI, mais en complément d’une aide européenne. Cependant, les esprits ont évolué à Berlin ces derniers jours, la chancelière n’excluant plus le recours au FMI en cas de nécessité. Georges Papandréou, le premier ministre grec, a menacé hier, devant le Parlement européen, de faire appel à l’organisation dirigée par Dominique Strauss-Kahn si ses partenaires n’étaient pas capables de « mettre sur la table un pistolet chargé » pour dissuader les marchés de saigner son pays... Comme il l’a fait remarquer, il a déjà adopté un « plan FMI » ce qui le dispensera d’un nouveau plan de rigueur avant de bénéficier de l’aide du fonds. Pour Jean Pisani-Ferry, le président du centre de réflexion Bruegel, « un appel au FMI par la Grèce serait la pire des solutions, car cela montrerait aux marchés que les Européens ne sont pas d’accord entre eux ». De fait, dans les salles de marché, selon mes informations, on partage cette analyse: un appel au FMI signerait le début de la curée...

·    L’exclusion d’un pays de la zone euro est-elle envisageable ?

Wolfgang Schäuble, le ministre des finances allemand, a évoqué cette idée dans une tribune publiée le 11 mars par le quotidien britannique des affaires, le Financial Times. Angela Merkel a abondé en son sens mercredi : pourquoi ne pas prévoir à l’avenir « une disposition dans le traité qui permette, en dernier recours, d’exclure un pays de la zone euro si les conditions (de contrôle des finances publiques, NDLR) ne sont pas remplies de façon répétée sur le long terme » ? Cette proposition n’a guère de chance de prospérer puisqu’il faudrait l’unanimité des Vingt-sept pour décider d’une telle modification des traités. Surtout, comme le note Jean Pisani-Ferry, « ce serait une option nucléaire alors que l’Eurogroupe n’a même pas été capable de faire des opérations de basse police : personne ne s’est inquiété des finances publiques grecques depuis dix ans et aucun avertissement officiel ne lui a été lancé ». En outre, une telle possibilité d’exclusion déstabiliserait l’ensemble de la zone euro, puisque les investisseurs n’auraient aucune certitude sur sa permanence géographique. « Envisager l’hypothèse de l’exclusion d’un État membre est absurde », a d’ailleurs tranché, mercredi, Jean-Claude Trichet.

Photos de l'Eurogroupe: Thierry Monasse (non reproductibles sauf autorisation)

Articles en Rapport

• La Grèce sceptique sur l'idée allemande d'exclure un pays de la zone euro
• La Grèce devrait se déclarer insolvable, selon la Bundesbank

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is being fined for botching 97 of 116 procedures to treat prostate cancer among men seeking care at the agency's medical center in Philadelphia. Although the punishment, which adds up to a mere $227,500, might not sound like more than a slap on the wrist, it is coming from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and is one of the largest the commission has ever given out for medical mistakes. [More]

The e-book war between Amazon.com and Apple is
getting uglier. Dennis Johnson cites a report in Publishers Marketplace (subscription required) that alleges that Amazon.com is telling publishers that if they switch to an agency model (ala Macmillan) , they will lose Amazon as a platform for both e-books and print.

This battle, which in many ways mirrors similar struggles between record labels and online music stores, underscores some of the challenges that moving into widespread digital distribution for a formerly non-digital product can bring.

Recently, Macmillian’s CEO John Sargent explained the agency model, as it relates to e-book sales, in his blog:

“Starting at the end of March, we will move from the ‘retail model’ of selling e-books (publishers sell to retailers, who then sell to readers at a price that the retailer determines) to the ‘agency model’ (publishers set the price, and retailers take a commission on the sale to readers).”

In other words, Macmillan wants to be able to control how much digital books are sold for on a per-book basis. Much like music publishers fought (and eventually won) the right to sell certain digital tracks or digital albums for more (or less, in some cases) than the $0.99 per track/$9.99 per album standard, publishers want that same control.

Amazon disagrees. And while it did acquiesce to Macmillan’s position at the end of January, it apparently has no plans of making those same concessions for future publishers.

In the Publishers Marketplace report, Michael Cader writes:

“At least one independent publisher of scale was told categorically by Amazon in a recent phone call initiated by the retailer that Amazon would not negotiate agency selling terms with any other publishers outside of the five initial Apple partners. This publisher was told that if they switched to an agency model for e-books, Amazon would stop selling their entire list, in print and digital form. In conversation, Amazon is said to have reiterated that as matter of policy they are declining to negotiate an agency model with any publisher outside of the five who have already announced agreements with Apple’s iBookstore.”

In other words, the agreements that have been made with the five publishers signed to work with Apple — Macmillan, Harper Collins, Penguin, Hachette, and Simon & Schuster — will not be passed on to smaller publishers.

It seems even the agreement with the other four publishers outside of Macmillan (known as Agency Four) isn’t set in stone.

Cader also writes:

“The indications are that if the Agency Four have not finalized new digital sales agreements with Amazon prior to the launch of Apple’s iPad, they could face delisting from direct sale at Amazon, as Macmillan did.”

Translation: If those publishers don’t finalize a new digital agreement with Amazon before the launch of the iPad, they risk being removed from Amazon.com

Because it is both the biggest seller of e-books and print books, Amazon has enormous power in the publishing industry. However, it’s unclear how long it will be able to play hardball with publishers, especially as formidable competitors like Apple (with iTunes) and Google emerge.

Apple, interestingly, held a reverse stance with music executives for many years before finally changing course in January of 2009 with the introduction of variable pricing. However, one reason Apple was able to exert so much influence over record labels pricing was because until Amazon launched its service (again, Amazon took the reverse approach with music, letting publishers set variable pricing for tracks and albums), there was no real competitor in the digital music space.

Amazon isn’t quite as lucky. First, e-books have been around for years and are available in a variety of formats from a variety of different storefronts. In fact, Amazon sold digital books long before it introduced the Kindle.

The e-book market has evolved much more quickly than the digital music space, which leaves less wiggle room for retailers, like Amazon, to exert pressure.

However, make no mistake, for smaller publishers, the risk of losing listings on Amazon.com is still probably a big enough threat to have an effect.

We’ll keep following this situation as it develops.

[via John Gruber]

Tags: amazon, apple, business, ebook price war, ebooks, ipad, Kindle, Macmillan

I caught up with Kieran Hannon the other day. He was in the Bay Area for a meeting with the Irish prime minister (he's on the board of Enterprise Ireland) and I realized it had been a good few years since I had last seen him.

He used to be co-managing director of Grey Advertising, then had gone off to Texas to work as VP of Marketing for Radio Shack, and then moved to Santa Monica, in Southern California. He's now working as COO at a promising startup called Sidebar, which has an interesting mobile technology that recommends content based on what people like, very useful for online retailers and others.

Kieran and his family had spent 18 years living in San Francisco, and I was curious what life in Southern California (SoCal) was like.

He said life was good, and that the startup scene was healthy and that there are a lot of media/technology centers there. I often write about how Silicon Valley has become Media Valley, because of all the media companies here (Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter, etc) so it makes sense that SoCal, with its rich media history, would be a fertile breeding ground for media technology startups.

Earlier this week, Mark Suster, a VC based in SoCal, wrote an excellent post about startups in LA. Want to Start a Technology Company in LA?

He makes some great points:

...LA [is] the second largest city in the country with a population if 16 million. We have universities like Caltech, UCLA, USC and many more. We have many seasoned entrepreneurs who have built successful companies here and made a lot of money for investors and themselves. But LA is not Silicon Valley and we don't need to aspire to be so. We will never be Silicon Valley in the way that Toronto will never be Hollywood. But we have a great city for building technology companies.

He goes into details about how LA is not like Silicon Valley.

- Funding is different, there are smaller "A" rounds of around $3m rather than $10m here.

- Recruiting is different. There aren't huge pools of engineers, but it is possible to build 100+ sized teams.

- Commuting isn't as bad as people think it is, most people live close to where they work. And hey, commuting isn't that easy here.

- Lots of content creation skills. This is an interesting point to make because software engineers can be found almost anywhere in the world today, but content creation skills are very culture specific, you can't outsource this work.

- There are now larger numbers of successful entrepreneurs, many are on the their second and third successful company.

Here are a few success stories:

There is a lot of innovation happening in LA from places like Eqal, Deca.TV, DemandMedia's studios, Clicker, Filmaka and other initiatives.
. . .
The whole category of "sponsored search" came from a successful LA company, Overture. (my firm, GRP Partners, was an investor). LA produced Applied Semantics that created AdSense and was bought by Google. We were also an investor in the early local listing company, CitySearch - an LA company. LA was a leader in lead generation (LowerMyBills), comparison shopping (PriceGrabber, Shopzilla), social networking (MySpace ... I know, I know - Facebook won - but it was still a big business). If we extend a bit North up the coast line we have many affiliate marketing innovators including ValueClick, Commission Junction and FastClick. They also produced GoToMeeting and CallWave.
. . .
A great team from MySpace has created Gravity. Gil Elbaz from Applied Semantics has now created Factual. Zorik Gordon is tearing it up at ReachLocal. TechCoast Angels backed GreenDot should be a major IPO this year. Frank Addante has created Rubicon Project. Douglas Merrill, the former CIO of Google, is building his next company in LA. Scott Painter, founder of CarsDirect has created two new generation LA startups (Zag and TrueCar, both backed by GRP Partners). Brett Brewer (ex MySpace) has AdKnowledge, there is Adconian, Legal Zoom and many more. Hautelook, Gogii, Magento - all very high potential companies building in LA.

Mr Suster is one of the organizers of Launchpad LA V2, which was announced today. This is a project aimed at helping first-time entrepreneurs and helping to educate them and guide them in building successful companies.

We will be selecting 10 startup companies to participate. There is no cost but you must physically be based in or move to Los Angeles for the 6 months of the program. Applications are due April 6th, 2010, the form is on the website and the Twitter address is@launchpadlad

A West Coast corridor of innovation...

It won't be long before we have a West Coast corridor of innovation stretching from Silicon Valley to Southern California, and beyond.

In fact, if you fly from San Diego heading north along the coast you pass over tons of innovation centers:

- The communications and biotech industries of San Diego;

- The electronics industries of Orange County;

- The media centers of Hollywood and Santa Monica;

- Then you reach San Francisco/Silicon Valley with its electronics, software, media tech, biotech, cleantech industries;

- Then Portland with its thriving startup scene plus Intel's big presence there;

- Seattle with a thriving tech scene mostly spun out of Microsoft, and Amazon;

- Vancouver and its software industry.

Wow. 1400 miles of innovation. There's no other region like it, hundreds of miles of world-class, industry leading, innovation and creativity.

Interestingly, it's all built on top of one of the most unstable fault lines in the world. A disruptive reality. Is there a connection?

I've always said that innovation has to be disruptive otherwise it's not innovation.

Dans un entretien diffusé en amont d'un sommet européen prévu la semaine prochaine, le président de la Commission européenne José Manuel Barroso a déclaré que l'expulsion d'un pays de la zone euro, comme suggéré par la chancelière allemande Mme Merkel, serait contraire aux règles du traité de l'UE.