publishing

Brief notes, briefly

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My post analyzing THE NIGHT STRANGLER, the second of the Carl Kolchak tv movies and the lead-in to the series, doesn’t seem to have posted to my LiveJournal friends list. I wonder if it came up as backdated, which prevents it from appearing on the list. It’s on LJ right here. Warning, it’s a long post.

Also, the back cover copy for Game of Cages has appeared on Amazon.com. Here it is:

A SECRET HIGH-STAKES AUCTION

As a wealthy few gather to bid on a predator capable of destroying all life on earth, the sorcerers of the Twenty Palace Society mobilize to stop them. Caught up in the scramble is Ray Lilly, the lowest of the low in the society—an ex–car thief and the expendable assistant of a powerful sorcerer. Ray possesses exactly one spell to his name, along with a strong left hook. But when he arrives in the small town in the North Cascades where the bidding is to take place, the predator has escaped and the society’s most powerful enemies are desperate to recapture it. All Ray has to do is survive until help arrives. But it may already be too late.

I like that.

Also, I have to put up a complete first chapter for GoC soon, along with revamping my website a bit. I haven’t done it yet, because Life keeps getting in the way. Soon, though. Soon.

Randomness for 6/8

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1) Ever wonder what happened to the Star Wars Kid?

2) Corpse flower blooms in Pasadena.

3) Examining the economic struggles of the publishing industry, graph-style. Part one. Part Two. Part Three. Part Four. Part Five.

4) I guess the PMRC didn’t take up all her time. I especially like the glacier and portrait portfolios.

5) Line art and the brain. I’m going to show this to my wife when she gets a quiet moment.

6) Do YOU want to help a legendary high school funk band play a live show when the documentary about their time together in the ’70’s and their modern day reunion plays at the LA Film Festival? They’re asking for donations to cover travel costs. There’s swag, too.

7) How sad am I that this is only photoshopped? Considering that I’m laughing like an idiot over it, only a little sad. I wonder if Patrick Stewart has made peace with the fact this sort of thing is going to dog him for the rest of his days?

Randomness for 6/4

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1) When someone says “Don’t touch me,” you should stop touching them.

2) Mole man’s borer misses the Baxter Building by quite a bit. Article.

3) My brother-in-law is curating and art exhibit. If you’re in NYC, check it out.

4) Diana Comet Presents…75 Years of Fabulous Writers via Sandra McDonald.

5) How did Ulysses S. Grant become a charicature? A fascinating take on a part of history that was written by the losers.

6) I don’t usually link to the Freakonomics blog (those guys sometimes seem to value iconoclasty over accuracy) but this is someone else’s research: The Visible Hand, how a presenter’s skin color affects online sales. Nothing surprising there, but it’s interesting information. Don’t read the comments.

7) Sixteen truly Geeky workstations. Personally, I’ve wanted a walkstation for a while. Also, I’d only pay 40 grand for a computer chair if it came inside a Mercedes.

Randomness for 5/31

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1) Never plan a crime through unsolicited queries.

2) The next step in the development of our robotic overlords is complete.

3) How many companies think to put ASCII art in their html codes? Warning: using View Source on that site is probably NSFW.

4) This one is for Hannah Wolf Bowen (and everyone else, too): A Batman costume… for your horse.

5) Forced perspective, using Legos. Really amazing.

6) The scale of celestial bodies.

7) A unique promotional idea. I don’t think it’s such a terrible idea, mainly because the idea is going to get her more attention than the actual actors she hired. Still, promoting your book based on pretend enjoyment doesn’t really work for me. I’d be more swayed by honest responses.

The Scalzi/Wheaton Benefit Anthology

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Check this out. John Scalzi and Wil Wheaton are putting on a benefit anthology for the Lupus Foundation of America. They’re accepting stories for a contest–with the winning story included in the antho. Entries have to be between 400-2,000 words, will earn 10c a word if accepted and have to be based on the crazy illustration posted at the link above.

Me, I’m working on a little story to submit (in my Copious Free Time) but my son (who’s 8 years old) was inspired to write a little something himself. It’s not long enough to meet even half the minimum word count, otherwise I’d submit it for him. Instead, I’ll post it here.

He doesn’t have a title for it (see? he takes after me) and I didn’t do a thing to it except type it out. Here you go:

Hi, I’m Wil. I’m the leader of the leader of Warriors with Oversized Unicorn Kittens With Wings And Extra Extra Long Spears And Infamous Clown Sweaters. We have set up a base on the top of a volcano. The Orc Warriors With Lots Of Metal And Round Hammer-Things set up a base down in the valley. They don’t go up because it’s a long walk and we don’t go down because we’re scared of heights.

Then one day I decided to go down and overcome my fears. I closed my eyes and moved down. After one second, I opened my eyes and turned to meet John, leader of The Orc Warriors With Lots Of Metal And Round Hammer-Things.

He threw his hammer-thing at me. He missed.

“Ha ha!” I said. “I have got you now!” I threw my extra extra long spear. It missed, too.

“Awww!” I said, and we went back to our bases.

The end.

Yeah, the illustration shows an axe rather than a hammer-thing, but I chalk that up to a misperception in the heat of battle.

Hope you guys are having a great day.

Quote of the day.

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“The hype never matches up with reality,” Mr. Norris said. “There’s money to be made in e-books. There’s money to be made in print books too. There’s no reason why publishers shouldn’t pursue both and just not let the hyperbole get out of control.”

— Michael Norris, senior analyst at Simba Information, a publishing consultant firm

Amazon Encore and midlist writers

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Recently, midlist mystery writer JA K*nr*th, announced proudly that he was going to publish the latest installment of his mystery series with Amazon Encore, the first “big name” (as he put it) author to switch to Amazon.com’s inhouse publisher.

Of course, many writers have been self-publishing on Amazon.com’s Kindle format, some with terrific success. K*nr*th himself feels his new contract is going to be a big deal, and that he’s going to get a strong marketing push from Amazon.

Me, I’m not so sure. For one thing, it seems as though his series was dropped by Hyperion because of flagging sales. The author himself states that his agent tried and failed to place it with a large NY publisher. So is this just a case of talking up a Plan C as though it’s been the winning strategy all along, or of finding a new, wonderful path only after exhausting the traditional choices?

It also raises questions about writerly self-promotion. From the time his first book came out, K*nr*th has been a proponent of promoting the hell out of your work, even when more experienced writers told him it was mostly a waste of time. So what does it mean that he’s… well… retreating from NY publishers to Amazon.com?

* That promotion helped drive sales of his early work, but readers weren’t enthusiastic about the books and it wasn’t sustainable.
* That promotion has very little effect and is mostly a waste of time.
* The downturn in his sales is mainly (rather than partly) to blame on the economy.
* The downturn in his sales is mainly (rather than partly) to blame on a genre slump.

Or none of those things. Or a mix of them. Whatever the cause, it makes me more dubious about hustling for readers than I ever was before. Once upon a time, reading this author’s blog made me feel like a dilettante. Now I’m thinking that I should keep doing the things I’m interested in and skip the rest.

NB: I’m using the asterisks in his name to thwart Google Alerts, because I’m not really interested in having him here. I wish him all the success in the world, but the way he talks online puts me off.

Randomness for 5/24

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1) “I am merely giving you your problem” Emma Thompson’s character in STRANGER THAN FICTION would have called this webcomic “fantastically depressing.”

2) An interview with indie comics writer Shawn Granger.

3) Awesome Lovecraftian furniture.

4) Shit my kids ruined. aka “The strongest visual birth control on the market today.”

5) “I’m 16. I got a book deal when I was 15. There are authors that were published at 13 and 14 and I always find myself thinking, God, must I fail at everything I do? They were published younger than me!” I posted that excerpt because it made me LOL, but it’s unfair out of context. The writer’s point is pretty much the opposite of what that excerpt implies.

I can only defend that quote one way: LOL.

6) Sixteen items Wal Mart sells only in China. via Jay Lake. Mmmm. Unpackaged meats. Vegetarians, you might not want to click that link.

7) @BPGlobalPR: a fake British Petroleum account. Topical, funny and very dark. “The good news: Mermaids are real. The bad news: They are now extinct. #bpcares”

Whoa.

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One of the items up for auction on the Do the Write Thing for Nashvilled flood benefits is a lunch with Miss Snark!

I know! Bid here.

So far, the auction has raised over $53,000 dollars to benefit flood victims in Nashville. And I still haven’t heard back about the books I offered.

Randomness for 5/13

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1) Facebook privacy default settings, and how they’ve changed over time, in convenient chart form. I have a FB account, but I never put anything there I wouldn’t put on my main blog.

2) Some folks are still claiming that health care reform will not save any money, and that the claimed savings are the result of budgetary gimmicks. That’s not true, and here’s why.

3) Paging David Prill! David Prill to the white courtesy phone, please!

4) The July 1690 issue of Cosmopolitan.

5) What you see here is a Men’s Room at the Hilton, and I don’t know if I could pee here.

6) Is “indie” authorship finally coming into its own? I’m not ready to go direct-to-Kindle, but it’s still an option. The sad(ish) thing is that I don’t have an extensive backlog of unpublished novels; I cut my teeth writing spec screenplays. Personally, I’m sure as hell not ready to give up on traditional print publishing. Sales of Kindle editions might be profitable, but it’s still a small pond. Growing, but still small. I want my book to reach as many readers as possible.

7) The Onion on childhood obesity.