
A couple weeks ago, my father pointed an article out to me in the local paper, the Valley Reporter, where there was a brief announcement about a local Boy Scout receiving his Eagle rank. It was exciting for the both of us, because with myself and my brother finishing up our time in scouting by reaching the rank of Eagle, my father, who held out troop together and fostered a solid group of kids in Troop 100 through, left to focus on other things, and we’ve largely been out of the loop when it comes to scouting for almost a decade now.
Yesterday, The Boy Scouts of America celebrated its centennial. The Scouting movement itself is a couple of years older, founded by Robert Baden-Powell in England, before migrating to the United States in 1910 from where it grew through to the 1970s, when membership hit its peak, before declining to the present day. Over that time, Scouting has become a vastly important organization within the United States, and numerous notable members of the public, such as Neil Armstrong, James Brady, Clive Cussler, Robert Gates, Harry Knowles and Robert McNamara, just to name a very few.
In the recent years, the Boy Scouts of America has declined, in membership and in public perception with a number of scandals and lawsuits over its membership, tainting its reputation. My memories, however, of the organization, despite my own issues with the stances that the organization takes, are some of the most precious to me and my family. Wired Magazine published an article yesterday, asking whether the BSA was still a relevant organization. I believe that it is, and I believe that in this day and age, with more options for children and young adults to occupy their time, the Scouting movement is one that is vital to this nation’s character, despite the issues that it has internally.
Amongst the biggest issue is the group’s stance towards homosexuality and atheism within its ranks, amounting to a sort of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy, one that was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, and one that certainly impacted my own scouting career at several points, from having Moretown residents slam their doors in my face while selling popcorn to having people question my own morals, assuming that my beliefs matched those held by the organization. Nothing could be further from the truth, and I have never believed that recognition or participation necessarily equated to compliance or recognition. In any case, none of the regulations really applied to our own troop, and we continued to do everything that we had done before.
What I remember the most from my time as a Boy Scout (Of course, any Eagle Scout will tell you that once you have achieved that rank, you are always an Eagle Scout) is the lessons in character, interpersonal relations and the practical skills that I learned while away at Summer Camp at Mt. Norris every year. I was a bit of a troubled kid at points, and Scouting taught me much when it came to dealing with other people my age, and basic elements of problem solving: skills that are not really emphasized in a school setting, which, in my mind, makes this organization all the more important for children in the United States. But even the basic skills that I learned while earning badges are ones that might come in handy someday: First Aid, Emergency Preparedness, Communications, Personal Fitness, Camping, Climbing, Environmental Science, Geology, Orienteering, Reading and more. I firmly believe that my experience in scouting gave me a well rounded education and background that I would not have had otherwise. It has taught me much, and far beyond the basic skills earned in the pursuit of a Merit Badge, but an appreciation for nature and the outdoors, for science and community, all things that I most likely wouldn’t have been exposed to in the classroom or with life in Moretown.
Where it is asked whether Scouting has a future and purpose at this time and place, I have to pause. I would not trade my experiences in Scouting for anything in the world, as it has made me the person that I am today, but I also believe that the organization needs to change, drastically, as societal norms change as well. The things that the organization has been condemned for have good reason to be, but I don’t believe that either issue clouds Scouting as a whole, nor do I believe that it detracts from what I learned. I see comments and hear people say that they would never allow their children to join a bigoted and backwards organization. I believe that in the larger scheme of things, Scouting falls on the lesser of evils list. While Scouting has its issues, ones that I sincerely hope will be fixed in the future, there are other groups out there that deserve more anger directed towards them for their own policies.
The thing to remember with groups such as this is that it’s not the overall policies that matter to the people, it’s how they are carried out. I was sickened to read that a group of Scouts were booed off the stage during the 2000 Democratic National Convention, because of the sheer narrow-minded and elitist, hypocritical stupidity that it represented. The Boy Scouts on the stage may or may not have been firm believers in the overall rules of their organization, and it troubles me in any instance in which people are judged not for their individual beliefs, but for what they are perceived to represent. How many of those democrats honestly pushed for a restriction of prayer in schools or for gay marriage? Beyond that, Scouting is far more than the problems that it faces. To the people who refuse to be involved, especially the ones who say: “I would join, but…”, I would say that they don’t help the problem, because Scouting isn’t the rules that it is governed by, but it is what the people who belong to it make it. My experiences with Scouting was heavily based on the morals and experiences of my scout masters, and everything that they taught, but in the end, it was I who decided how to incorporate that into a relevant experience that I make use of every day.
This past Christmas, I bought my brother a coffee table book on the history of Scouting, and I was delighted to see his face light up when he opened it. For me, and for my brother (I’m reasonably sure), Scouting gave us some of the best experiences and education in our lives. No rules, controversy or slammed doors can ever take that away from me, or tell me that it was all for naught.









eBooks & Value
Published February 5, 2010 Post 3 CommentsTags: Amazon, Books, Business, Commentary, Current Events, ebooks, Geek Stuff, kindle, Macmillan, Rant, Tor
Last week, Amazon.com and publishers started going head to head with the business model that Amazon.com has set up for their Kindle eBook store. With the recent release of the Apple iPad, new alternatives have been opened for publishers. With it, there has been a flood of problems and statements from all edges of public opinion about not just the power that Amazon.com seems to be able to field, but also to the very nature of the place of e-books.
The background of the story lies with Amazon’s preference for a lower price for an e-book on their Kindle device. Typically starting at $9.99, one of the major publishers, Macmillan, went to Amazon with new proposals for how to sell their books. From how I understand it, it would introduce a graduated pricing system, starting their new books at $15.99 and gradually dropping the price as demand falls away. This is something that’s already pretty well established in the book industry, with hardcovers of the really big books starting off at $25 to $30, before dropping down to trade paperbacks (Around $15 each) going to or going directly to mass market paperbacks, generally around $7.99 each. There’s a new, taller book (I’m not sure what it is called) that typically runs around $9.99 per copy.
A big part of the issue is that profits that go to the publisher, and eventually, the author, have been cut into, as it is a cheaper way to distribute the book. This made a lot of sense for Amazon.com, because after purchasing a multiple hundred dollar device, because it helps the more economically minded consumers actually use the device. While it’s just a little more than the mass-market paperback, buying a new release book that would normally be $30, for something between $9.99 and $15.99, makes a lot of sense, especially for the consumers who really matter – the ones who buy hundreds of books a year.
This makes good for the consumer, for sure, but it does impact other elements down the publishing line, and indeed, the bookselling line. Pundits, for years, have been predicting the demise of brick and mortar bookstores with the introduction of online bookstores such as Amazon.com, and with the slowly growing rise of e-books and the Kindle, it’s coming back, and for good reason: bookstores are getting hurt by this new competition. I recently was laid off from Borders when they closed down 200 of their smaller stores in order to consolidate to their larger ones. While there are other issues at stake there, it is clear that people buy far more off of the internet than from in a store. When given a chance, I’ll do the same thing – I can pick up other books cheaper from Amazon’s used bookstore, but also from used bookstores around the area.
This is all part of a larger consumer culture that seems to be pushed along by giants such as Amazon.com, Walmart, Home Depot and other stores: consumers want to pay the lowest possible price for what they want. Bigger stores can make that happen, and we’ve been conditioned to respond to that sort of thing. One of the problems, however, is in how the consumer values the product that they’re intending on buying, and how much the creator, whether it’s a publisher or manufacturer, and there’s a growing gap that’s pushed forward by these larger stores. It’s good for the consumer and good for these stores in particular, but it’s not good for the manufacturer of whatever good you’re trying to buy.
I’m not sure that that is a good thing, because eventually, the manufacturer’s ability to produce will have to be decreased due to lack of profits. In the publishing industry, forcing a publisher to take a smaller cut for their books means that less money could make it to the author, who will either need to sell more books or negotiate a better deal with their publisher. This is even more of a problem when stores, such as Amazon.com sell a majority of your books, and where your entire publishing company has been taken off, as is the case with Macmillan.
I think part of the issue is addressing just how much a publisher should value their e-books, and making customer expectations meet that. Books have a lot that go into them, from editing, layout, marketing and so on, and in a consumer culture where expectations towards lower and lower prices are pushed as well, that particular detail is going to be lost. It would seem that the publishing industry has reached a level where they don’t want to move any further.
How exactly does one value an e-book? I can say with certainty, that I will typically go with the price on the back of the book for a majority of the books that I purchase in a year. I try to find something with a discount, and made use of my employee discount, but once purchased, I know that the book was mine. When it comes to e-books, there are a whole lot of other options, especially with Amazon.com, which essentially sells you a license for the book, which can be revoked at any point. (This happened, somewhat ironically, with the book 1984, recently). This is the same with music and software, and has been around for a while, so I’m not sure why everyone is raising a fuss about it now. Thus, people purchase a product that they cannot transfer or resell as they could the physical product. Even if it is cheaper, I think that even $9.99 isn’t a good value for the consumer, as opposed to my feeling that $25 is a very good value for a physical book in some instances.
Who’s at fault for this? Well, everybody has blamed everybody. The publishers have been blamed for distrupting Amazon’s plans, the consumers have been blamed for wanting low prices, the publishers for demanding too much, and the authors have been blamed for whining and complaining about this. This has always been an issue with business, because there are numerous people who get different cuts, and everybody wants a larger piece of the pie. Personally, I think that the publishers are well within their rights to set the books at whatever price they want – how they value their product – because they are primarily in charge of the creation. Amazon has just enough leverage to force their own prices on the publishers because they account for large portions of the sales. Authors, I think are largely blameless in this, because they simply have no control over how these books are sold, marketed and edited. Consumers, I think, need to have a more realistic value in their heads for what they buy.
The bottom line that I see here is that this row isn’t the end, but in this instance, it’s not unreasonable for a graduated pricing system, as publishers want. While Amazon.com is looking to entice people to their Kindle, I think that there is sufficient momentum on their part for moving people to digital formats. People aren’t necessarily going to be scared away by higher ebook prices, because these higher prices will still be better than the alternatives. Just as casual readers will wait for a year for their favorite author’s book to come out in paperback, the buyers who really matters, the repeat customers who buy a larger volume of books will buy the books as they come out, generally at the regular price, or at the sales price that drops that just a bit. Unfortunately, as Amazon.com has moved to punish a publisher, the authors have been caught as collateral damage.
This, more than ever, just reinforces my desire for a hardcopy book, rather than an e-book. The tactile crap that a lot of people go on about just doesn’t figure into it. When I buy a book at a bookstore, that is my property, not just a piece of data that can be revoked by a company as it sees fit, and I can sell it and return my losses as I need. Plus, I don’t need to worry about a battery for any of the books that I own.