The Ritz Carlton and other nice details in life

Recently I stayed at a Ritz Carlton and a Courtyard Marriott. I've been at many Ritz Carltons before, and while luxurious, they are by no means the perfect hotel chain. Mostly, I enjoyed this experience at the Marina del Rey site. However, the little details that make it great, are also the ones that taint it as well.

Here's a side-by-side comparison of both Marriott owned facilities (Note--I'm really picky about bathrooms and use it as a big qualifier for liking a room. And I love baths. So if you prefer a great shower, your opinion might vary.)

Courtyard (Culver City)
Cost: $169/night
Room Size: Enough to walk around without tripping.
Room Amenities: Modern design, clean, average quality, firm comfortable bed, nice size desk with plenty of outlets, no ipod dock alarm clock.
Bathroom: Nice use of granite and travertine stone. Small but functional. Adequate shampoo/conditioner/shower gel provided of good quality. Unusable bathtub typical of Marriotts of all price ranges - so shallow that even a under 5'2 female cannot cover body in water. Exposed pipes under the sink, also typical, and gross, visible from bath and toilet.
Check-in/out: Quick and easy.
Bellhop assistance: Non existant. There's a desk, but no person around when we were there. There was a cart that can be used.
Overall staff presence: Pleasant but sparse.
Parking: $16 for valet, $10 for self which is close to main entrance.
Food: Not-included breakfast, continental style, average quality.
Internet: Wifi is free and works well.
Other: Free coffee in the mornings. Safe did not work. Must pay for water that is in machine down the hall. Nothing in room.

Overall: Good value for the money.

Ritz Carlton (Marina Del Rey)

Cost: $259/night

Room Size: Enough to walk around without tripping. Plus small seating area, roomy desk area.

Room Amenities: Typical Ritz Carlton, designed for your grandfather with dark wood galore, yellow and gold highlights. Firm bed with soft topper makes a great night sleep, plush sheets and comforter. Desk is nice size, but not enough spots for plugs, for computer and cell phone charging. No plug in the safe. Drop moldings near ceiling leave straight shadow, which is a nice touch and reveals good quality build. Lots of storage space. Ipod charger alarm clock in room was useful. Especially since there were not sufficient plugs at the desk.

Bathroom: Lots of marble. Not too small, but not very big. Good smelling shampoo/conditioner/shower gel but the containers were difficult to extract the liquid--wonder what it would be like for someone with arthritis? Useable bathtub, but not a large soaker that I've experienced at other Ritz Carltons. Not a special experience, but at least functional. Shower is not separate, only one showerhead. Nothing special. Nice cabinetry that hides pipes under the sink. Robes are nice, absorbant, and plush--albeit very heavy.

Check-in/out: Quick and easy.

Bellhop assistance: They gather your things and magically bring them to your room. Friendly. Helpful. Always trying to offer directions.

Overall staff presence: Pleasant and plentiful. Gift shop attendant was very helpful and sent items to our room.

Parking: $35/day for valet! No self-park associated with hotel. Front desk lied to us about self-park availability. Bellhop told us about public parking next to hotel that is not in/out parking, but only $6/24hours.

Food: Worst breakfast buffet I've every seen at a Ritz. Great quality off-the-menu items, with fabulous banana praline french toast. Good quality buffet, but some days there was only a small selection of prepared items, no made to order tables. Nice view of the marina from the restaurant.

Internet: Wifi costs $10/day, slow, and clunky sign-on. Annoying and disappointing. Left a bad taste in my mouth.

Other: Free watermelon water in the mornings that is fabulous. No free morning coffee that I could see. Excellent fitness center with state-of-the-art machines. Too bad they were not facing the water view. Love the hand towels placed on each machine. Nice pool, jacuzzi, location on the water, tennis courts and basketball court. Hotel design was drab exteriorly--too much beige. Free newspaper, bottled water in room.

Overall: While the $90 difference in price would suggest the Ritz is a great value, the little extras that cost more do add up and frankly, I'd rather have them rolled into the price. The nickel-and-diming that occurs at a luxury chain like the Ritz is stupid. However, if you plan on using the pool and other amenities, that does make it worth it. I love the great service that a Ritz Carlton provides, but here the service was amazing and sometimes disappointing. The luxury features were less evident, and frankly, I think the Ritz could modernize their design throughout the whole brand. I've also stayed at locations that were vastly superior in room size, and bathroom design for similar prices. 

What is the future role for traditional publishers?

I came across an interesting blog post recently, that talked about the mistakes publishers are making in the digital age, in particular, the use of the ipad.

And in the Amanda Hocking era of self-publishing success without having a book contract with a publisher, do the publishers have a role? What is it? Can they be profitable?

In this pdf, J.A. Konrath and Barry Eisler discuss the success of ebooks and the rejection by Eisler of a 500k book deal.

If this is the sign of the times, it makes fiscal sense for well-known authors to self-publish ebooks since they can get a 70% royalty of what they sell. In fact, why WOULD a Dean Koontz or Dan Brown continue with regular publishers when their loyal readers will pay for ebooks that could largely go into the authors pocket, FASTER than the slow process of the traditional route?

The number one answer is an unnatural attachment to the paper form. Eventually, these people will die out, and like in the above pdf, the analogy given is with candles. "Originally, candlemakers were in the lighting business; today, they're in the candlelight business." In other words, publishers will publish paper books, but the main business of selling books will be digital. (for the record, I still love paper books, and right now, a paperback is still a superior mode of reading at the beach where I would hesitate to bring my ipad)

Number two reason: You want to make a movie based on your book. Some ebooks have been optioned, and that market is growing. However, getting a book deal legitimizes you, and activates the "trollers" who look for books that would make great movies. Most authors make a living, not on book sales, but on movie options on their books. I think that movie producers will look for ebooks with high sales, and still use publishers as a guide for quality work. In other words, unless you are Amanda Hocking, you won't get your ebook noticed for a movie deal, you will need to go the traditional route.

If you are a popular author who isn't attached to a professionally published book, and doesn't care about the movie business, it makes sense to self-publish by ebooking. (yes, I made that term up)

So, if I extrapolate logical behavior of popular authors, then in five years 80% of the well-known authors will self-publish some or all of their work in ebook format. Who will be left for publishers? What will their role be?

Publishers will need to keep popular authors by giving added value. This can include editing, marketing, and a superior quality printed book, plus a MUCH larger cut of digital sales. If publishers carefully vet their authors and put out high quality books, consumers will recognize a traditional publisher as one worth "the risk" of a purchase. And if self-pub ebooks are on average $2/book price, traditional publishers could charge twice that and justify it.

As mentioned by Dr. Brenner, they don't charge twice that. They charge five or ten times that. Which is ridiculous.

If, hypothetically, 80% of popular authors go rogue, then the role of traditional publishers will be to find rising stars. Would a reader risk reading a new book by an unknown author that has no track record? If they have a large online presence, possibly. Otherwise, the publisher throwing their weight around could likely inspire confidence and thus, a purchase.

Would this mean publishers would lose so much money as to not be viable? Unlikely. If the model is mostly digital, then the costs to publish are nearly nothing. With low cost books, more people can and will buy them, increasing the market size. And clever publishers could create added value in these digital books by association with their "name."

In other words, if publishers adapt, they will survive and flourish, admittedly with a slightly different role as they serve now. If they don't adapt, they will die. And quickly.

HTML Hell

While my book Marriage of Deceit sits on the desks of publishers (for over one year), I've decided to go all Amanda Hocking and sell some ebooks. Okay ebook. Singular. I do have many books, but they're in different genres and my agent has advised me to have a different identity for each genre.

So I experimented with the Kindle and iPad search engines and discovered the Kindle is much more search friendly. I love apple products. Between my husband and me we have every type of "i" product out there. I have many generations of apple computers. I am completely PC free, and the only microsoft product I use is microsoft office - which I don't like but tolerate.

Where apple loses is in its searching prowess. When I want to look for a book, I can search an author or title, best sellers that are free or paid, but not by keywords. Let's just say I want to find a thriller: I can search the category "mysteries and thrillers," but that only brings me the top authors in alphabetical order, for the paid/free books. That means if you are not already selling a lot of books, and your name is not already well known, it is not possible to discover someone new and up-and-coming. As a buyer and a seller I am frustrated with the iBookstore searching ability.

Luckily, there is the Kindle. I'm not sure why Steve Jobs is allowing their competition to have a free bookstore alongside their own, but I'm glad. The Kindle app is superior in its searchability. If I want to find a thriller, I click on the category "mystery and thrillers" and then the subcategory "thrillers." What makes it user friendly is the "sort by" feature. I can sort by ratings, price low to high, high to low, best selling, and publication date.

Thus, I decided to first publish on the Kindle format. This allows me to use it on the Kindle and iPad platform. Of course, this meant getting the product ready for upload, and my word document did not translate well. I was forced to slog through the HTML and CSS in order to get an acceptable appearing document.

I am not a programmer. When I was a kid I learned BASIC, but never evolved into a hacker. A few years back I taught myself rudimentary HTML with the hopes of designing my own website. Only I realized that the time commitment was not worth it. And I scrapped that idea and simply went with a blog that allowed me extra tabs to include other pages. In other words a website blog. Blogspot.com allowed me to do all of this AND it has the "edit HTML" feature to make me think I can play around with the programming if I choose. Usually I don't.

I re-taught myself HTML and added on a quicky version of CSS to interpret the microsoft word generated HTML and clean it up. I did this painstaking process, and think I came up with a pretty good document. I have since uploaded it all to kindle and in a few days, I should have an actual app to buy. Then, I'll see how it looks in real time, and if it is okay, command people to buy it.

Of course, my neighbor can't wait to read it, but only on her Nook. It took me 30minutes to even locate the part of the barnesandnoble.com website where you can even consider adding an ebook. They accept HTML so I did the upload and...well...it did NOT look pretty like on the kindle. The word file itself needed some help, but looked better than the HTML version. In the next week or so I'll pretty-up the word doc and upload a Nook version.

And soon, I'll post some material from my book.

Signing off,
Bayla

PS I know I'm not gonna sell like Hocking, but I would like to move my book forward. Mostly I'd like to take some control over a system that moves so slowly it is amazing ANYTHING gets published.

Mixed feelings about LA

I used to live in LA. Briefly. I had this vague idea growing up that I wanted to go there. My parents wouldn't let me go to college there. So after graduating I went. It was a liberating experience.

I was awed by the beauty of the landscape with nearby soaring mountains (especially best viewed after a recent rainfall) nearby the pacific ocean. When I would take the 101 to the valley, I would be stuck in traffic and distract myself with the amazing beauty of the hills beside me. I imagined they were formed by g-d taking his enormous hands and poking upwards on the crust.

I adored the warm sun, which was ever-present. Nearly every day it was 80 degrees and sunny. The weathermen had to resort with segregating the forecast into areas to create variety. Cooler in Santa Monica by the beach, baking in the valley, snowing in Big Bear. All the while, it was the same "80" and image of the sun that populated the forecast.

But like everything else, there is a duality. LA is a desert after all, and the nights were cold (for me). One of my favorite memories growing up were the warm summer nights spent outside. Perhaps I was unlucky, but during my short 10 month tenure in LA, there were fires in malibu, and a large earthquake in Northridge. I still have a tiny measure of fear whenever I visit the city. The earthquake didn't just shake the ground, as I too have never quite been the same since that experience.

I have many friends in LA (and now a relative due to my new sister-in-law), so I always have a reason to visit. And there are many warm people in and around the area. However, I can't help but see some of the truth in shows like "Entourage" "Episodes" and "Californication." There is a frenetic energy in the city of angels; a constant layer of anxiety behind many smiles. Where ambition and creativity meet, there can be strife.

It is for this reason, I had my first novel (first complete one) set in LA. That first novel will always hold a special place in my heart, as will my feelings about Los Angeles.

Spartacus

I'm sad to see the pre-quel come to a close. It was interesting in that we got to see how the main characters came to be. However, you had to assume that certain people who were not in present day would meet a dastardly end.

My husband calls Spartacus porn for women. Probably true. He doesn't seem to mind it himself - I think there is just the right balance of men in loin cloths (for women) and blood and gore (for men).

Oddly, Spartacus isn't our only guilty pleasure. We like "The League" too. And Bob's Burgers. I'm trying to get him into Millionaire Matchmaker, but right now, that one is all mine.

Brie

Am I alone in my love of brie? Bake it, slather apples, figs, peaches or some other sweet fruit on top, and it simply melts in your mouth. I'm one of the pickiest eaters on the planet (I say "discerning") but I like brie. Mmmmm. It's making me hungry.

I mention brie because my husband is on a work trip and had some recently. I'm supremely jealous. Of the brie, not the work trip.