Periscope Depth

stronger than yesterday

Greetings, Carnival of the Indies visitors! I think Joel meant to send you to my post on cover design instead of this one. Check out that post for a detailed walkthrough of my experience in commissioning a cover design. You can also check out my book on Amazon if you want to see the finished [...]

don’t look at my hands in my pockets, baby

Amazon attracted the Internet’s ire last week for its 5% discount for users who scan an item in a physical store, then buy it online. But amidst all this hubbub, Amazon also rolled out another program that’s stirred up similar furor, albeit in a smaller circle: Kindle Direct Publishing Select. KDP Select allows independently published [...]

what I stand for, I mostly stand behind

So I saw this snippet of text about a squillion times last week, either in writing or in a video or in the image below: Excerpting the important parts, in case you can’t see the image: You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods [...]

as one life finishes, another one starts

[Updated below.] Netflix pissed everyone off a few weeks back when it announced that the price of “everything you want, all the time, as fast as we can mail it to you or force the pipes to carry it” was increasing by more than 50%. It’s a bold new future and I don’t know what [...]

we’re just a million little gods causing rainstorms turning every good thing to rust

I had an exchange with Tom yesterday that reminded me how close I came to flunking macroeconomics. You might not believe it, given my understated brilliance, but I really struggled with advanced macro. I was never great at studying: I lacked the diligence it required and attending college at the dawn of the era of [...]

the price you pay

Every year, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts conducts an experiment in the form of a sales tax holiday. This experiment determines the premium that I am willing to pay to shop in a Best Buy, Target or Filene’s Basement without dealing with hordes of suburbanites and their children. That premium is 6.25%. Also: Many shoppers said [...]

love you, mama, but you’re too proud to change

While I’m thinking about Netflix, a quick question: why does Netflix care so much about improving their recommendation system? Netflix made headlines years ago when it announced its Netflix Prize, a $1,000,000 bounty to whoever could build an algorithm that would improve the accuracy of its recommendations by 10%. When this award was claimed in [...]

we gon’ find you, we gon’ find you

I’m frankly and legitimately torn on the dustup in Wisconsin. On the one hand, as an economist I dislike cartels. Cartels band together to raise the price of their product, using intimidation to keep members from breaking away. We wouldn’t cheer if a group of airlines teamed up to inflate the price of a plane [...]

macheteconomics

New post on Overthinking It, examining Machete through the lens of public choice theory and anarchist philosophy: a State is that agency which (1) has a monopoly on force in a given area and (2) upholds the claim that this monopoly is legitimate. In Texas as depicted in Machete, no agency has a monopoly on [...]

a little goodwill goes a mighty long way

Yesterday, Jerry Holkins (a/k/a Tycho of the popular video game webcomic Penny Arcade) said some stuff about used games: In a literal way, when you purchase a game used, you are not a customer of [game developer THQ]. If I am purchasing games in order to reward their creators, and to ensure that more of [...]

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  • Periscope Depth

    The website of John Perich, author of TOO CLOSE TO MISS and editor for Overthinking It. He's learning about writing, marketing, publishing and promotion, and he encourages you to learn along with him.

    perich@periscopedepth.com

  • TOO CLOSE TO MISS




    "... opens with a bang and never relents ..."
    "... from chapter one, I couldn't put the damn thing down ..."
    "... already looking forward to Perich's next book ..."

    Mara Cunningham knew that sleeping with a married man was a bad idea. But when her lover shows up in the hospital after his wife and son are murdered, the rumors about her turn dangerous. Now she's the prime suspect in a double homicide, and the real killers will stop at nothing to silence her ...

    Buy the book that readers are calling "a great, suspenseful thriller" at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online retailers.



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