Child of Fire is on Google Books
Not the whole thing. Not a long, continuous piece, either. But a lot of it. I’m cool with that, I guess.
Very little is going on, but I’m a bit overwhelmed anyway. More details later.
internet
Writing marathon, day two.
StandardI’ve had my first pint of coffee, caught up on (most of) my email, and skimmed my LJ friends list (thank you f-list). I decided not to dabble in today’s internet outrage, mainly because I don’t see why this is a big deal. Publishers have always released hardbacks first, then other editions later. If readers want to pay less, they have to wait.
I certainly do. While I am no longer clinging desperately from a slender sapling over the Cliffs of Bankruptcy, I still can’t afford to buy hardbacks. Earlier this week, I rushed to the new books section of B&N to pick up a copy of A Young Man Without Magic
But for readers with the cash and the urgent desire to read now!, they can have the book in an expensive format.
As for e-books, it’s another format–and less profitable, too, especially since Amazon.com has been slashing prices so hard. Why is it such a shock that publishers are delaying their release? Various commenters in the linked post above claim that, if the e-book release is not the same day as the hardback, they will forget about it completely, which seems pretty doubtful to me. You also see the usual “I guess they want to encourage piracy!” statements, which isn’t worth addressing.
Also in the comments there, I believe I’ve seen the first instance in the historical record of a dedicated e-book reader stating that they would be willing to pay hardback prices for their e-books. Mark the date!
Jane at Dear Author thinks e-book buyers are “being punished” because of the ongoing price wars, which is not only wrong, but way too personal. Not being able to have the thing you want when you want it is not punishment.
It’s possible all this will change. It’s possible that someday movies will be released into movie theaters, on DVD, and on Netflix streaming on the same day. I guess. I’m just not particularly upset at having to wait for an edition I can afford, and I suspect that, in time, e-book audiences won’t be, either.
Added later: Or is it all about reining in Amazon.com?
Now, back to Man Bites World. I mentioned in a general way that yesterday was a productive day, but damn am I grateful for YouTube and its videos of “demonstration fires.” How did writers survive before the internet?
I still have fixes that need doing, but conceptually I think I have a handle on them. Now it’s just a matter of going through and addressing everything in square brackets (not to mention smooth out that prose. Christ.)
Here I am
StandardI’m sitting in Starbucks on a day when I’d normally be at Day Job. I’ve taken two days off this week to work on Man Bites World. Hopefully, I’ll have it close enough to done that I can send it to my agent on Saturday or Monday.
Research has been concluded (I hope). Internet squabble dabbled in.
Time to work.
James Nicoll’s Nightmarish Future
StandardGlobal health and wealth, with UN data mining and an amazingly skillful presentation of data.
For you Facebook users, this is a TED video from 2006. You can watch it here.
Amazon.com reviews
StandardNo, not the reviews I’ve been getting; I mean the ones I write. Twice now I’ve written a view on Amazon.com for a book I bought from them, and twice it has not posted after a 48-hour delay. I swear I’m filling the form out correctly.
What could be causing this? The reviews are pretty short–probably around ten words. Could that be it?
Awesome concentrate
Standardvia mightygodking
This again
StandardWhy Science Fiction Is Dying & Fantasy Fiction Is The Future.
Fantasy author Mark Charan Newton has some ideas about why sales for sf is flagging while fantasy is still going strong. He comes across as the extra who had to nod and duck out of frame when Claude Rains said “Round up the usual suspects.” We have literary types and Hollywood and “We’re living in the future!” and, er, women. (Because “Women matter” which I guess is supposed to suggest that women as a group read very little science fiction, or that sf doesn’t appeal to women. Or something. The author doesn’t make it entirely clear, stating that sf readership is falling and citing “More women than men read books” as a reason, leaving the reader to draw the conclusion. I know there are many, many women who read sf, but I wonder whether the percentages match the percentage of the reading public as a whole.)
There are a couple of interesting comments and assumptions in the post. One is the comment about women I mentioned already. Another is that the LORD OF THE RINGS and HARRY POTTER movies have driven people to read fantasy as a genre. While I’m sure that’s happened, I’m not all that convinced it’s happened at a significant scale. Harry Potter was bringing people into the genre well before the movies; that’s why they made the movies, actually.
An interesting question raised but not addressed in the post is that there are lots of science fiction movies out there (TV shows, too) but they don’t seem to be driving people to pick up sf novels. (In comments, “Niall” states that DOCTOR WHO is the exception, and if that’s true it would be interesting to figure out why.) Didn’t sf have a huge spike in popularity after STAR WARS?
He also states that he’s “talking about Space Opera, Hard-SF etc – the core genre.” I can’t help but wonder what parts of science fiction don’t make it into the core.
I guess my final point would be that I don’t expect science fiction will ever die. Not really. It might become the sort of thing that only a specialty press would want to publish for a core audience, but I seriously doubt it would ever fall to that level. Seriously doubt, in part because the poster notes that when talking about the survival of the genre, literary sf doesn’t count. I can’t quite figure out why.
I should mention that the last science fiction hard science fiction[1] novel I read was probably Picoverse, which was great fun until I realized the characters weren’t. My interest flagged quickly, and it occurred to me that several of the sf books I’d read recently had incredibly uninteresting or unbelievable characters. I’d been reading them out of a sense of duty–science fiction is supposed to be good for me, isn’t it? And the culture, too?–but not enjoying them. So I stopped. At this point I read mostly fantasy and mystery, and I’m happier for it.
[1] Discussion in comments has made me realize that I have read sf since then, but I wasn’t thinking of them as sf because I’d enjoyed them.
Offline
StandardI’ve been offline all day because of malware on my office computer. Thanks for putting pron links on my work desktop, malware writers!
You know how your read an article that makes you want to slug the writer in the gut?
StandardYeah, you know. But aside from the ignorant and infuriating he-wanted-to-talk-to-Klingons! tone of the article, the author reports a claim (without checking it, obviously, since that would have required work) that startled me.
Let me back up for those who didn’t want to click the link. The article reports that the Higley Unified School District asked an employee to resign after he installed SETI@home on all the district computers. More backing up: SETI@home is a program that uses idle time on your computer to scan radio signals for signs of alien communication.
This is what caught my eye: “And his alleged downloading of alien-hunting software might well have used additional energy resources and caused other related damage or accelerated depreciation to the hardware. The school district estimates these losses at between $1.2 million and $1.6 million.”
Over a million dollars, maybe up to a mil and a half, just for SETI@home? Is that fair or complete bullshit?
Book too short?
StandardI don’t often give out writing advice here on my blog (seems pretty presumptuous at this point in my career[1]) but on message boards you can’t shut me up. So instead of writing something original this morning, I’m going to link to a post I made for people who find they need to add plot to a novel that came out too short in the first draft.
Feel free to tell me I’m wrong, there or here, or offer additional ideas.
[1] Holy crap I just called it a career.