Brave New World

I was talking on Dubai Eye Radio's Business Breakfast the other week about the wonderful story of Sonia Land and Random House.

Literary agent Sonia Land (of highly respected agency Shiel Land Associates) signed up prolific author Catherine Cookson to publish her backlist online under a new imprint, Peach Publishing. Over a hundred Cookson titles have consequently appeared on Amazon's Kindle Store. The covers alone are a talking point and have prompted more than one comment along the lines of 'If that's your idea of cover art, I hope you're better at the rest of the publishing skillset."

The teensy weensy fly in the Cookson ointment is that she already has a publisher, Random House subsidiary Transworld. Land offered a higher royalty rate, according to The Bookseller. In a Hollywood-style gambit, the news was followed hard by Random House signing top author Tom Sharpe to publish his backlist on Kindle with them, cutting out his literary agent of some thirty years' standing (see where this is going yet?), Sonia Land. At least the Tom Sharpe covers are pukkah.

Heavy hitter agent Ed Victor has followed suit and others have confirmed they are looking at launching their own imprints. You'd be forgiven for surmising that, faced with an existential threat, publishing is tearing itself apart.

The issue of royalty rates for e-books has been an increasing rubbing point between agents and publishers - Amazon takes 30% of a Kindle book, leaving a whopping 70% for the publisher (or, if you're self-pubbed, author). Agents are arguing that given the physical costs of print, distribution and returns are now out of the equation, a royalty rate of 50% of the cover price for the author is equitable. Publishers are currently paying 20-25%.

Agents get, generally, 15% of their author's income from books. So an e-book with a $10 cover price (incredibly expensive, BTW, in e-book terms) would currently give Amazon $3, the publisher $4.50, the author $2.125 and the agent $0.375.

The growing pressure many authors feel in favour of self-publishing, by the way, is only increased by the realisation that selling your book at a much more realistic $2.99 would net you, the self-published author, $2.09 - nearly as much money as going through a publisher and an agent and selling at $10. There's increasing traction around that $2.99 price point - and if your book sold at that price through a publisher/agent, you as the author would get a lowly $0.635.

Meanwhile, the most successful indie author of all time, million-selling Amanda Hocking, has signed a $2 million deal with a traditional publisher through an agent, presumably retaining her digital rights. Oh, to have the clout to do that!

The question now becomes, 'How much value do a publisher and an agent give me here? What are their roles in the e-book world?' This question is also being asked a lot by publishers and agents. Any answers on a postcard, please!

As Bad As It Gets

It can't get much worse than this. The latest development in the UAE's petrol shortage saga is that the Executive Council of Sharjah, one of the seven Emirates that makes up the UAE, has demanded an end to the petrol shortages and a full explanation of what's behind them by the end of today from Enoc/Eppco.

It's a clear enough sign that the Executive Council doesn't buy the pump upgrade story, either. But then, did anyone?

How bad can it get for a company? When do you have to recognise that mendacity and silence won't wash any more - that you actually owe a duty to people? When a government is forced to call you to task publicly and demand answers from you? I guess that's about as bad as it gets.

As Matthias, son of Deuteronomy of Gath, tells us: "Worse? How could it be worse?"

Of Genies And Bottles

Apart from a vague and popularly considered mendacious statement about pump upgrades, the petrol station operators responsible for the fuel shortages in the UAE have remained silent. Both Gulf News and The National report today with sidenotes to the effect that no spokesperson could be reached from Enoc/Eppco or Emarat. And, in fact, The National notes that officials from Jebel Ali Port were also unavailable or not commenting.

Gulf News today played catch-up with The National, which sent reporters to Enoc/Eppco petrol stations to determine that no pump upgrade work was going on, as it reported yesterday. GN today files on 'sceptical motorists' who point out, as I have indeed found, that stations 'closed for upgrading' miraculously open after the supply truck has swung by. The National has, once again, done a sterling job.

The lack of transparency is so stunning, it's amusing. This is, indeed, humour of the incongruous. And, of course, by failing to tackle the very proper concern of the general public, the operators are making it all a great deal worse. The papers are rubbishing the statements and talking to petrol pump attendants, motorists, analysts - in fact, anyone who'll talk to them. The result is a rising tide of reporting and growing public alarm which is leading to panic buying. This, of course, is putting more pressure on those stations that do have fuel and now even Adnoc stations are running dry despite the fact that they don't actually have an underlying supply problem.

So by staying silent, the operators are creating an ever-larger rod for their own backs. Tell people what the problem is, how you're solving it and how long it'll take. It's not actually very difficult.

What's the solution? Well, even the most hide-bound of morons would have worked out by now that the genie is out of the bottle. Social media, that Internetty thing, allows people to share opinions and views - so we all know what the papers are trying to prove - the stations aren't closing for upgrades. They haven't got any fuel to sell us because deliveries aren't coming through. There is a very real and basic problem here and it's not logistics or maintenance. As Gulf News quotes Kate Dourian, Middle East editor at Platts:

"Emarat, like the other two main gasoline suppliers, Enoc and Eppco, has for years been operating at a loss because it buys product at international prices and sells at government-regulated prices below market value."

This GN story goes into some depth regarding the subsidies issue.

That's not an 'issue at Jebel Ali' or a 'pump upgrade'. That's a very real systemic problem that could well have medium to long term effects - the issue has been bubbling under for months, with incidents of shortages going back to last year. So this is hardly a new situation - there has been plenty of time to plan a better, smarter communications strategy than dumb silence and unsustainable assertions.

The irony is, of course, that if irate consumers withdraw their custom, these companies will breathe a sigh of relief! So why not just clam up and wait for it to all blow over? Once supplies are restarted, people will forget all about it and life will go back to normal. They're not answerable to any consumer association or ombudsman, so a strategy of silence won't do them any harm, right?

Wrong. It's yet more bad publicity for the country as a whole (the oil producer that ran out of fuel - wait for the internationals to pick that one up) driven by old-fashioned contempt for the media and public that has resulted in considerable concern and inconvenience for a large chunk of the population.

We can all see the genie. Perhaps it's time for the operators to tell us what they're planning to do about it. When they do, they can console themselves with this: there's no shame in telling the truth.

UAE Petrol Crisis. The Mystery Deepens

I retain my sense of wide-eyed amazement that this situation could be possible: a fuel shortage in an oil producing country. Today's newspapers are full of the story and a remarkable pattern is emerging of silence and mind-boggling mendacity on the part of the distribution companies being hit by the shortages.

In fact, The National (James Bond's favourite Middle Eastern newspaper, dontcha know) leads with 'Empty filling stations and the great fuel mystery', gleefully reporting that retailers Enoc and Eppco (two brands of the same company, in fact) have cited pump upgrades to their 167 stations across the country as being the cause of their empty forecourts. The newspaper's reporters visited a number of the stations and confirm what you already possibly suspect: there is no sign of any work going on to upgrade anything in any way whatsoever. I have personally seen closed stations opening again once a tanker has visited, so there must obviously be some degree of indecision regarding which stations to upgrade.

Gulf News contents itself with unquestioningly repeating the statements made by Enoc/Eppco regarding upgradation to the petrol pumping network facility terminal equipment. By the way, you can just juggle up the words from the last sentence as you see fit because whichever way you place them, they mean the same thing. Emarat has maintained a dignified silence throughout.


Meanwhile Dubai Eye Radio's The Business Breakfast interviewed an 'expert' who spent his time on air speculating that this could be some sort of pipeline issue.

Inside The National, we see mention of the issue of subsidies, regulated prices and supply that many are speculating is actually the issue behind the shortages - at current government-set prices and with oil prices hovering around the $100 mark, it's hard to retailers to do anything other than make massive losses - The National quotes Enoc's CEO as saying that selling fuel at the regulated price cost it Dhs1.5 billion last year - despite two very unpopular price rises taking place over the year. Adnoc, of course, refines its own fuel and so has been unaffected by the need to upgrade its pumps.

This remains speculation, however, as the retailers who have run out of fuel (sorry, who are upgrading their pumping infrastructure) have for weeks now either maintained a stoical silence or thrown out chaff in the shape of vague and arguably mendacious statements. That policy, so popular here but increasingly unrealistic in the age of online and social media resources, has led to a risible situation - everybody knows that something is very, very wrong but nobody is allowed to talk about it officially. It does rather remind me of the burrow in Watership Down where the society of well-fed, sleek rabbits who are being snared by the farmer who's feeding them are prohibited from using the words death or snare.

Where's Ze Betrol?

Queues during the last 'fuel crisis' here in  2008, when ADNOC was selling fuel for 

Dhs10 a gallon less than Dubai's filling stations. Story here.

It was a funny weekend. After being turned away by EPPCO and ENOC stations, we finally joined the snaking queues at ADNOC and bustled our way through the jostling and aggressive throng of cars competing to get to the ranks of pumps.

'Why no petrol?' I asked the EPPCO guy.
'Government issue, maybe.' He grinned.

Gulf News ran a report on the situation the other day, but has obviously continued to receive nothing but the traditional filibustering, half-truths and downright dis-ingenuousness from spokespeople. For instance, this little classic from ENOC, reproduced by Gulf News:

"Enoc is managing its fuel supplies to meet the current demand. This involves a two-pronged approach of regulating the distribution of fuel through our network, as well as upgrading selected stations."

Luckily, GN has got hold of some third party analysts who confirm that the issue is actually that of subsidies, with petrol distributors in the country losing money for every litre they sell. This has led to problems underwriting the ongoing loss and so we find ourselves in the odd position of living in an oil-producing nation where the petrol pumps have run dry. The assertion is one made by commenters to this here post on the issue back in April - we must have reached some sort of crisis point last week.

You'd think ADNOC would be pleased at the increased business, but looking at the economics, they're just losing more money faster than anyone else.

I can feel a petrol price hike coming up. Now, given I fill my Pajero for a sum of Dirhams that fills a small hire car in the UK in pounds (we pay per gallon what you pay per litre, people), you'd be forgiven for whipping out the world's smallest violin and playing us all a lament. But an increase in fuel would have a huge knock-on effect on things like food prices here.

Even Pepsi and Coke have put up their prices recently. Grief.

The TRA Responds

You may remember this post last week, in which I noted that the UAE's TRA, or Telecommunications Regulatory Authority was making efforts to get onto social media. They had arguably got a tad ahead of themselves by suggesting that everyone else might like to have a go at 'getting social'.

Finding the TRA on twitter, I rather grumpily asked, "Is there any move to regulate against the currently unusually high broadband charges levied by operators in the UAE?"

The TRA Tweeter duly directed me to their online query form. As I hadn't had my cup of tea that morning and was feeling unusually quixotic, I repeated my query on that form. You can find the TRA's query form here. It does ask for rather a lot of data from you, but then I suppose that could help to cut down frivolous inquiries from grumpy smart-alecs who haven't had their tea. I had absolutely no expectation of getting an answer back from them and, in fact, had forgotten all about it and moved on - specifically, I went and made a cup of tea.

Nestling in my inbox this morning was the response below:

Dear Alexander,

Thank you for contacting the TRA

The TRA does not directly set the retail prices for Telecommunications Services in the UAE. Retail prices are set by the licensees and approved by the TRA. This is because information relating to the cost of each service is best known by the operators themselves. The TRA believes that retail prices will fall as competition increases. To that end, the TRA is currently mediating negotiations between the licensees for each operator to share the other operators network. This will allow Etisalat and du to compete in the provision of fixed-line services on a national basis. The operators are at an advanced stage of testing the enabling technology and systems and the TRA expects competition in the provision of Broadband services to start at the end of this year. The TRA further expects that such competition will result in a decrease of the associated retail prices. This type of service based competition (as opposed to infrastructure based competition) is common in telecommunications regulation and will result in consumer choice.

Hopefully, the above clarified your inquiry.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, impressed the cotton socks off me.

FIFA Own Goal: Blatter Battered

I have just witnessed the most amazing press conference I have ever seen in a life peppered with colourful events. Sky News gleefully transmitted a live feed of the entire Sepp Blatter FIFA press conference and it was a display of the most breathtaking arrogance I have ever seen in my professional life. I only regret the camera stayed on Blatter and didn't register the appalled, shocked and angry press in the room.

I simply couldn't believe it - why the entire press corps didn't walk out when a disembodied voice announced 'one question only will be answered please' and the mic was switched off on a journo asking infuriated follow-ups after Blatter had simply refused to answer his (perfectly valid) question was a mystery to me. Blatter's refusal to take the first question of the entire Q&A on set the tone for the whole event. His grimacing, scrunched-up face spat defiance throughout his whole haughty peroration.

How marginal media were brought in among heavy-hitters, apparently an attempt to steer away from the 'big questions' was amazing. Blatter was strutting, incredibly formal and arrogant beyond belief. His performance screamed old skool; a man obviously beyond question by us mere mortals. At one stage, he seemed to suggest that FIFA was a nation and he was its president.

The messy break-up of the whole debacle was glorious: Blatter lecturing the media on 'respect' as they shouted back at him, the final German journalist having a good old go but eventually being silenced in what must stand as an all-time low point for football. The poor old PR guy trying to get Blatter off the stage (having cut short the entire awful thing, obviously leaving an incredulous press contingent with most of their questions still unanswered) must have died a million deaths as the man grabbed the mics and started to have a go back.

At one stage, at the end, Blatter's spittle-flecked antipathy gave rise to: "Yes, you may laugh!" Wonderful - until then, we didn't know the press was laughing at him. Now we do.

I don't care much for football - I only caught this because we were having a take-away and Sarah was watching TV. But I do care passionately for communications and our media. If for no other reason than his management of tonight's appearance, it is clear that Blatter has been too long accustomed to having too much power with too little accountability. Journalists at the event, talking on air after it blew apart, were enraged and rightly so - but they really should have stood up, as a man, and left.

He must, clearly, go. He's not fit, as the Sex Pistols tell us, to shovel anything...

The UAE TRA: More Front Than Brighton

The UAE's Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, or TRA, has called for increased use of social media services. The most immediate result of this announcement was me spitting tea out all over my long-suffering (and terminally ill) notebook.

The story, carried by Gulf News today as a 'Gulf News Report' rather than, more truthfully, a subbed WAM file, is linked here. It really is a quite remarkable display of doublespeak.

"The emergence of social media has opened gateways of communication with the rest of the world," said Mr. Al Ghanim. "It is always a good idea for a company to use social media to connect with communities they serve because it improves media coverage. In addition, social media encourages user participation, openness, conversation, connectedness and a sense of community."

Go to http://www.orkut.com from the UAE and you'll find it is blocked. Yes, it's not the most brilliant social media site in the world, but it is blocked by the TRA because of the content that people have put up on it. The TRA has had a long history of blocking 'dating', sorry, I mean social media sites. Twitter was blocked until August 2008, retarding the platform's adoption in the UAE. Flickr was similarly, until relatively recently, blocked in the UAE. Blogs have also been blocked by the TRA, including the still-blocked Secret Dubai Diary.

Take a look at the little beauty above: it's a snapshot of tweets from @theuaetra and it's totally representative of the 102 tweets that the organisation has pinged out into the Twitterverse in a one-way sputtering of informational spitballs. There has been no interaction at all - although it'll be interesting to see how today goes.

The TRA's YouTube channel contains nine videos uploaded three days ago, two three weeks ago, three a month ago and so on. Started at the end of December 2010, it initially drew quite high views (total views of its uploaded videos just top out the 5,000 mark) but the last batch of videos have earned one or two views each. Rather charmingly, comments are enabled, but I couldn't find any actual comments, even on videos that have attracted over 200 views. The channel has eight subscribers and one friend.

The TRA is also on Facebook, where it has garnered a remarkable 63 Likes. Again, the information flow is pretty one way with no Likes, Comments or Discussions. The oldest post I could find was dated the 2nd March. There is precisely one consumer interaction on the Facebook page and I reproduce it below. Beyond this, I have absolutely nothing more to say on the matter.

"Social media encourages user participation, openness, conversation, connectedness and a sense of community."

Who's Afraid Of A Regulated Web?

French president Nicolas Sarkozy has come out and said he wants a regulated web - "You need to hear our limits, our red lines" he told an audience at the two-day 'e-G8' conference. The AP report is linked here. His is not the first whiff of regulatory sulphur, of course - only the other day I posted about the British culture secretary sending out a clear 'enough is enough' message regarding privacy on the Internet after Twitter 'made a mockery' of that Great British Institution, the super-injunction.

Of course, it should come as no surprise to hear those who govern us (all too often, you can't help but think, forgetting they're supposed to be representing us) starting to talk about regulation. Wikileaks was a massive wake-up call to governments, followed by the wake-up call of the 'Arab Spring'. We now know two things we did not fully appreciate a year ago.We have to redefine privacy, secrecy and transparency and we have to redefine governance, the aspirations of people and the way in which they are represented.

But redefining these things doesn't necessarily mean micro-regulating them, at least in part because it's so fast moving out there you'd be hard put to keep up - and that's a key problem governments have found in the past: you can't create legislation that keeps up with innovation. The Microsoft vs DOJ case showed quite clearly that an entire technology market, let alone platforms and applications, can change during a single action in the courts, let alone the time taken to draft and pass a piece of well defined legislation.

Establishing a set of principles might be a nice approach to take, but then we've been doing that ourselves: up to now, morality and behaviour on the Internet have been largely a function of communities - we all know what the rules are (if you use someone else's link on Twitter, you include in the tweet that it was via them; if you send unwanted emails to people you'll be called a spammer and face consumer unhappiness; if you hijack a hashtag, you'll get pwned all over the place and so on) - or are in the process of coming to terms with changes and defining rules as a pretty much consensual process.

Of course, regulating the Internet in the name of privacy and responsibility is all very well, but we also have to be wary of regulating discourse - even when that discourse is uncomfortable for us. And here's the issue at the heart of government discomfort with that discourse: the ability for people to share opinion and organise in shows of public opinion that are not ordered through the representational process that has put the people in government where they are.

I mean, imagine a world in which everyone's voice could be heard! How insane would that be? A world where everyone had access to a viable way of voting instantly on any given topic, of canvassing opinions and sharing information without fear of corporate interference, lobbying or governmental mendacity, a world in which we didn't actually need to be represented by politicians because we have the mechanisms in our own hands to represent ourselves.

Why do I need an MP to vote on my behalf in parliament when I can register a vote on a website instantly and have that vote counted in picoseconds? What if the Internet could slim down government in the same way it has slimmed down other disintermediated processes?

What if?

Raise The Sea Mermid!

The Sea Mermid and Lady Rana washed up on the beach down the road from our house after the late winter storms we had in late January and early February this year, ending up on the same stretch of sand some ten days apart in what must be a million to one coincidence. I posted about this event, giving an entirely more accurate account than Gulf News and The National, incidentally, both of whom stuffed the story up.

For months now, the two ships have been sitting just as the were the day they were beached by their captains, guarded by a solitary Sharjah policeman. They eventually even installed a plywood hutty thing for the sentry.

Last week cranes and other materiel started appearing on the beach front, joined by a large winch and lots of other bits and bobs. It started to look like a serious cargo cult had arrived into town. Now they've hauled the poor old Sea Mermid right up onto the beach and they've started breaking her apart, cutting her up for scrap. After that, they'll do the same with the Lady Rana - apparently the Sea Mermid (it's actually registered under that name believe it or not, wrecking my theories about dyslexic maritime sign writers!) is the better of the two ships, but they're both to go.

A source close to the matter who declined to be named as his Tufty Club membership hadn't come through confirmed that both ships were being scrapped by Dubai Shipbuilding & Engineering. So there you go!