Pornokitsch

"25% of UK online consumers use Amazon.com to research future purchases, compared to 19% for search engines, 17% for retailers' websites, and 13% for physical stores." - Forrester Research (April 2015)

Halifax do an annual survey of 'pocket money' (that's 'allowance' to Americans). In 2014, 78% of kids 8-15 still receive it, although that's been consistently reducing every year since the survey began. The amount of money received has also been steadily falling, and is now an average of £6.20/week. (Boys, incidentally, receive a bit more than girls, which helps prepare the future generation for grinding inequality.)

Incidentally, the average cost of a children's book in 2014 was $6.09/£3.99 (mass market paperback) and for a young adult book $7.69/£4.99 (also mmpb). Whew. However, if the goal is to push first-format sales, a YA trade paperback comes it at $12.92 (£8.45) or hardcover at $19.21 (£12.57). Which means if you're a publisher or retailer relying on actual young adults to buy your Young Adult books and drive immediate sales, you're also relying on them to save their pocket money from week to week. Speaking as someone that was once a child - good luck with that. 

(We need bookshop-based microloans for schoolchildren! That way we can teach them about wage inequality and crushing debt!) 

Poor #sad children. 

Twitter Analytics are improving, and now accessible to every user - not just advertisers. If you've not leered at your own account, it is actually pretty fun. My followers are 84% interested in books and 16% still wondering when the porn will show up. (They also slightly over-index for mayonnaise purchasing.)

Massive report on internet trends. US-focused, sadly. I'll be pouring through this over the next few days, but if you spot anything intriguing or relevant, let me know.

Amazon is finally paying tax! The VAT rules that went into effect this year have been slated for their impact on small and microbusinesses, but this - Amazon coughing up - was the regulation's primary intent. Sadly the Amazon nuke had small business fallout. But if we're going to protest #VATMOSS, might as well give some credit to it as well.

And Sarah Lotz picks holidays gone horribly awry.

Pornokitsch People Elsewhere

Molly Tanzer is one of the contributors to the upcoming Gods, Memes and Monsters, the wonderfully esoteric collection from Stone Skin Press. Plus, her novella, Rumbullion, is being published as a paperback from Lazy Fascist Press. 

Mahvesh interviews Nnedi Okorafor and Sarah Lotz for Midnight in Karachi. (And reviews Sisters of the Revolution.)

Mahvesh and Jared also continue to plow through Dragons of Autumn Twilight over at Tor.com.

And finally

Deadspin has a cool flashback to one the weirdest things that can happen in sports - the intentional walk with the bases loaded. It has happened six times in history, and every time, the team that's given up a free run has gone on to win the game.  

We're tinkering around with MailChimp automation for these irregular round-ups. You can sign up here, but there are no guarantees as to formatting, quality, regularity or even the continued existence of this list. But it'd be nice to have your opinion... I won't, of course, use your data for anything else, and if the list does go defunct, I'll delete everything properly and then sow the server with salt.