We Are the Industry

We Are the Industry

The gatekeepers of legacy print and comic book publishing have a habit of referring to themselves as "the Industry". Claiming that exclusive label may have been justified when the only alternatives were underground comics Xeroxed at the library or vanity presses. That claim started to sound disingenuous with the explosion…
July 31, 20185 Comments
SFF Death Report Greatly Exaggerated

SFF Death Report Greatly Exaggerated

Longtime readers may remember when I posted this graph: That image made the rounds and caused a bit of a stir in certain indie quarters a couple years back. Most of us sensed that the market for science fiction books had drastically shrunk since the good old days. A lot…
July 25, 201816 Comments
Very Different Personages

Very Different Personages

From time to time I still run into aspiring authors who dream of signing a Big Book Deal™ with a New York publishing house. Similarly, there are still cockeyed optimists who are convinced that Hollywood poz factories will go back to making wholesome entertainment as soon as a particular trouble-making…
July 10, 201810 Comments
False Moral Equivalence

False Moral Equivalence

A blogger finds fault with my moral calculus equating paypigs who sell out their culture for a pot of message fic to Americans who aided and abetted communists. “Stop giving money to people who hate you.” Brian Niemeier has taken this to an extreme: From now on, I will regard…
June 27, 201825 Comments
Overcome or Succumb

Overcome or Succumb

Background: Artist. Foreground: "Artiste". Forget everything you've been force-fed by the literati about artists being special snowflakes exempted from the laws of supply and demand because they serve only the whims of the muse. To succeed, novelists must be no less market-facing than plumbers or lawyers. Friend of the blog…
June 26, 201812 Comments
Tradpub Death Spasm

Tradpub Death Spasm

Tradpub is dying, but a mortally wounded beast's death throes can be dangerous, as best selling author Lionel Shriver (pictured) discovered to her sorrow. James Delingpole reports: Publishing giant Penguin Random House has announced that its authors are no longer to be chosen on literary merit but according to a…
June 22, 201812 Comments
21st Century Publishing

21st Century Publishing

Red Pill Religion put on quite a show last night. It was my honor to join new pub all-stars Nick Cole, John C. Wright, and Russell Newquist for a rousing and informative discussion of 21st century publishing strategies. It comes as a surprise to me that some aspiring authors haven't…
June 18, 20184 Comments
Top Subgenres

Top Subgenres

Author Jon Del Arroz recently passed along this intriguing chart from SFWA's Nebula Awards presentation. H/t Bradford Walker. The numbers must have come as a shock to the creative writing degree holders and Clarion Workshop grads at SFWA. Meanwhile, anyone who's been watching the market knows that the ideologically driven,…
June 4, 201826 Comments
Fire Your Agent

Fire Your Agent

Galaxy's Edge co-author Nick Cole forwards a dire warning to authors from Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Here's KKR: The news broke publicly over the holiday weekend. If you blinked, you missed it. The bookkeeper for a prestigious New York literary agency pled guilty to embezzling millions from the agency, leaving the agency…
June 1, 201812 Comments
Son of Return of Amazon Zombie Memes

Son of Return of Amazon Zombie Memes

Legacy media stooge David Leonhardt took up his pen the other day to add a clueless editorial to the august body of clueless New York Times editorials. The target of Leonhardt's poison pen was Amazon, which makes his editorial a double threat since it also expands the canon of mainstream…
May 9, 201819 Comments