publishing

Writing marathon, day two.

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I’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 by Lawrence Watt-Evans (and to count the copies of Child of Fire they still had on the shelf–I know. I suck.) I’ve been waiting for this book for a while now, and when I saw it was a hardback, I had to put it back. That sucks for the author, but what can I do about it? Even trade paperbacks are a strain right now.

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.)

Randomness for 12/7

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1) “What do you mean kids’ books? It says right here, they were made in 1956. How could they be kids’ books?”

2) The eleven topics all crime fiction blogs post about.

3) Ten things crime fiction writers can learn from Paris Hilton

4) Michael Shanks as Hawkman? No. Just… no. Isn’t there a superhero who plays tennis and does hot yoga he can play? Because that seems more his speed.

5) Your book isn’t self-published, but do readers know that?

6) Mark Henry has an offer for readers who want to try his funny, sexy books, and who would like an ARC of the new one.

This again

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Why 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.

Randomness for 12/2

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1) Perils of translation: Emailed out-of-office autoreply text from translator used on road sign.

2) Seductive monsters, Batman-style. Has to be seen to be believed. The “best” part is that this is part of a villain’s origin story.

3) “The slush pile seems, in some sense, to serve as a sort of representative sampling of the collective unconscious of the American public—a surreal landscape of vengeance, conspiracy, otherworldly beings, and really big guns. Sexual relations between ladies and gentlemen are fraught with peril (especially given that one or more participants in any romantic endeavor may very likely be aliens, demons, were-vampires, undead, or in a coma); queerness is almost nonexistent, as is any sort of radical politics (unless by “radical” one means “hoping to overthrow the government and install in its place a parliament selected by extraterrestrials from a more spiritually advanced dimension”); and people of color exist only as grotesque caricatures.”

4) The NY Times 100 Notable Books of the Year. No, I’m not going to read it, either. I loaded the page, “control f” searched for my name, and of course found nothing. Now I’m done with the list.

5) Cormac McCarthy donates his typewriter to charitable auction. The most amusing part is that the dealer handling the auction thinks it’s astonishing that McCarthy wrote all that fiction on such a primitive machine. Someone should explain to him that it’s the machine in McCarthy’s head that did the real work.

6) Celestial Soul Portraits. The perfect gift for your most hated enemy. via tnh’s Particles.

7) Maureen Dowd in a telling misstatement: “Barack Obama is the ultimate party crasher. He crashed Hillary’s high-hat party in 2008 and he crashed the snooty age-old Washington party of privileged white guys with a monopoly on power.” A quick note for Ms. Dowd: Barack Obama didn’t crash a thing. He was invited by the only people empowered to give out invitations.

Randomness for

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1) Easy newspaper article, type 12: Carefully selected dumb student answers.

2) Author Jackie Kessler breaks down the problems with “Harlequin Horizons”.

3) Photos of a river of hydrogen sulphide in Mexico. via Jay Lake

4) Fish on Europa? via Jay Lake

5) A beautiful animated book trailer that fails to promote the book. Sound, people. If the image is a little out of focus or awkwardly lit, people will muddle through. But if the sound isn’t right, nothing’s right.

6) Smash putt!

7) Twilight: New Moon. “However, last year in the line, I did interviews, where I handed out a list of ten things and asked for which ones happened in the books. Seven or eight out of ten got circled. Then I pointed out that the list was ten warning signs that your partner is becoming abusive or controlling, and asked what they thought of Edward’s behavior in this new light.

Responses included, “I wish a guy loved me enough to treat me that way,” and, “But Bella needed it.”

This year I was behind a group of girls who briefly discussed Team Edward vs. Team Jacob. Each one pointed out that the other person’s champion was possessive and controlling/bossy. “Well, but she let him,” was the final word, on each side.”

Bonus 8)! Team Lipbite!

Randomness for 11/19

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1) How many baboons could you take in a fight, armed with only a giant dildo? My score: 38.

2) The milk industry responds to the findings of Jamie Oliver’s nutritious school lunch experiment, which I linked to in a previous Randomness. Naturally, they claim (falsely) that kids won’t drink milk without a ton of chocolate and sugar. My own son drinks milk once in a while, but I imagine it isn’t nearly as often as the dairy lobby would like.

3) Men married to smart women live longer. via E.E. Knight

4) Economic stimulus that makes sense: Cash for Caulkers. via Ezra Klein

5) The dummy-slap heard round the internet: RWA revokes Harlequin’s preferred-publisher status over new vanity press. I link to Making Light because the RWA still has their open letter behind a member login, for whatever reason.

An entry under the category “Good News.”

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Yesterday, I asked my agency to accept an offer from a Russian publisher for both Child of Fire and Game of Cages. (Yay!) It was actually bought in an auction between two competitors, so it’s nice to see that interest in my work persists.

I won’t be buying that Bugati anytime soon, but a little extra money will be nice (whenever it arrives). I can’t wait to see the cover!

What counts as “front list?”

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Here’s a quick question for the group-mind: While I realize that the front list drives sales of the back list, how many types of writing can qualify as “front list?”

To be more specific, does short fiction or magazine articles drive the sales of novels, to any measurable degree?

Does this sound dirty?

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Because I’m going to link to myself.

I’ve spoken before about Wordplay.com, and how much I learned there about writing and storytelling. Well, after a friend posted a note there about my PW Best of 2009 listing, (I’ve linked to that list enough times, haven’t I? I don’t want to seem like I’m self-promoting feverishly) a couple of regulars had questions about novel-writing and publishing.

What could I do but answer? The thread is here, but it’ll age off the main message board after a while, so I’ll try to update this link when the thread hits the archives. They’re long answers, too, with a lot of detail I don’t normally write about, and with all that detail collected into one place.

Anyway, I post this not just so people can read it, if they’re interested, but so that people with more experience than I have can post contrasting experiences, or point out where I’m wrong, or even add to the general knowledge base. It’s a terrific site, with an interesting mix of professional screenwriters and serious amateurs, and I’m sure any additional information that folks can add would be more than welcome, I’m sure.

Randomness for 11/6

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1) Rear Gear! For the easily offended. via Jay Lake

2) “They must be professional house shooters.”

3) Rush Limbaugh: Victim of Racism.

4) Death by anti-science: Iraqi General to use dowsing rods to detect IEDs. From the article: “He is such a believer that the Iraqi military are abandoning proven methods such as sniffer dogs.” This is my unhappy face. via James Nicoll.

5) Hard sales numbers from a NY Times bestselling author.