Category: Uncategorized

Mailvox: the changing writer’s market

NA writes about his perception of the current hole in the fantasy market:

Part of the reason I bought your books, along with Stephen King’s Dark
Tower series, was that I got burned by the last two fantasy series I
bought.  By which I mean Raymond Feist and George R. R. Martin.  I’ve
been looking for a good fantasy series to read and so far yours does not
disappoint. Another reason is that I want to write my own.  I figured I should get acquainted with others’ work before I get started.

Since I’ve last been a part of this hobby, there was no such thing as
e-books.  I’m way out of touch with the market and where it’s headed, as
far as it would concern a writer.  I’m also not aiming to become the
Next Big Thing in fantasy, but I’d still like to get published. I know it’s kind of an open ended question, but is
there anything I can do to help myself before I start putting words on
the screen?  

A lot of people like Martin’s
work, though I can barely understand why, so I know there’s a market out
there for fantasy.  In fact, if A Game of Thrones is considered some of
the best right now, then that market still has a gaping hole in it.
 People are hungry for fantasy fiction, but as far as I can tell they’re
willing to settle for McDonald’s because there’s no Cheesecake Factory
in sight. 

If you have a minute, I appreciate your insight.

My primary feeling is that the SF/F market is at a fascinating technologically imposed crossroads.  On the one hand, we have a narrow spectrum professionally published market that is shrinking, where the average advances are considerably smaller than they were, where the stakes are increasingly winner-takes-all, and books such as Redshirts and A Dance with Dragons represent the very best it has to offer.

And on the other, we have the rise of a broad spectrum independent digital scene where books are of wildly varying quality, the prices are better and many of them are free, there are no gatekeepers, distribution is limited, and it is very difficult for the average author to even let the average reader know his book exists.

Let’s put some basic facts before the reader. John Scalzi reported that Redshirts, the eventual Hugo Award winner written by the industry’s foremost self-promoter and pushed heavily by the biggest publisher in SF/F, sold 35,667 ebooks in its first eight months of release.  That represented 45 percent of the 79,279 sales-to-that-date; the rest were hardcover (34 percent) and audiobook (21 percent).  That’s pretty much the high water mark these days for anyone whose name does not begin with JK, EL, or GRR.  McRapey’s post is uncharacteristically understated, as that is not the state of A genre title, but in terms of 2013, THE genre title.

A Throne of Bones and its satellites, on the other hand, sold 3,865 ebooks in their first eight months of release.  Not bad for a book that has never seen the inside of a bookstore, on the other hand, at barely more than 10 percent of Redshirts ebook sales, it is a comparatively minor blip that is of no possible concern to the mainstream publishers, right?  Well, here is the problem for the publishers.  On a grand total of 13 free Kindle Select days, another 20,274 copies were downloaded from Amazon.

Now, there isn’t a lot of overlap between the SF reader interested in Redshirts and the EF reader interested in A Throne of Bones.  They are two fairly different markets. But there are probably 10 independent books that are to Redshirts what ATOB is to A Dance with Dragons.  The problem isn’t that the independents are necessarily a threat to the established bestsellers, but that they are standing in the way of the midlist writers as well as the mainstream writers of tomorrow.  And, of course, they are absolutely devastating the average margins.

If you simply run the numbers, it becomes apparent that the only thing keeping the mainstream publishers alive these days is the fact that Amazon now voluntarily limits its Kindle Select program to five free days per quarter. Readers are readers, after all, their ability to consume books is not infinite, and due to the relative price-elasticity of books, ATOB and its satellites are now reaching one-third as many readers as Redshirts without any marketing, without any press, and without any bookstore distribution.  In fact, were it not for Amazon’s Kindle Select limits, Selenoth could quite reasonably have reached 378,154 readers in the first eight months, nearly five times MORE than Redshirts did.

This is a game-changer.

Now, you can certainly point out that I have made considerably less money on my 24,139 copies sold/downloaded than McRapey did on his 79,279 copies sold in the first eight months. But that’s irrelevant and those are just today’s profits anyhow; as Facebook and Twitter have shown, there is considerable value in free users.  The point is that if you’re just getting into the writing game, there is virtually no reason in trying to work within the mainstream publishing model.

Consider: I did literally nothing to market my book except for publishing the Selenoth satellites. No ads. No billboards. No push from Audible. You can’t buy them anywhere but Amazon. The audiobook doesn’t even exist yet and there will never be a paperback. And yet, all it would take is an easily changed policy on the part of Amazon to permit me to reach more readers than the most relentlessly marketed writer in SF/F today. To cite a concept from Nassim Taleb’s excellent Antifragile, the mainstream publishing industry is EXCEEDINGLY fragile and is totally dependent upon the willingness of Amazon to avoid inadvertently wiping them out. Unless one is already tied to the world of professional publishing for contractual reasons, I see no reason whatsoever to waste any time or effort attempting to enter it.  For all practical intents and purposes, it may not even be there in a few years, so don’t be caught up in thought processes that were last valid three years ago.

As for the hole in the fantasy market, don’t be misled.  That is an artificial one caused primarily by the ideological biases of the professional publishing gatekeepers and it is being rapidly filled by the independents. In my opinion, NA’s best strategy is to publish as an independent and become a part of that process.  Remember, this is the situation today and future changes look to favor the independents, not the mainstream publishers.

A cure for gay?

It would appear that publicly taking a certain political position is sufficient to render an internationally famous gay activist the equivalent of a straight white conservative Christian male in the eyes of the mainstream media, an evil to neither be heard, seen, or spoken of.

Russian gay activist Nikolai Alexeyev, who until now was considered
Russia’s top lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) advocate,
appears to have ended his political career tonight in a series of
anti-Semitic Facebook and Twitter posts that have even his most ardent
supporters calling out his ongoing anti-Semitism….

In apparent anger over cancellation of his participation in a
conference call hosted by human rights group Human Rights First
tomorrow, Alexeyev responded via Twitter and Facebook with a slew of hateful anti-Jewish comments, since he is now convinced that “the Jewish mafia” did him in, rather than his own rank prejudice….

He had an illustrious career.  And it’s now finished.

Let me see if I have this straight. It is now observably safer for an activist to criticize Vladimir Putin and the KGB than to criticize a non-existent mafia that has no influence with the media. Furthermore, if one’s career is forcibly ended as a result of criticizing something that does not exist and has no influence with the media, that should not be considered evidence that said mafia does, in fact, exist, but rather, as the inevitable karmic consequences of one’s prejudice.

I find this puzzling. How would the end of the gay activist’s career, such as it is, prove that he is wrong? And what color is the logic in your world?

Transracialism: the next moral imperative

Since the societal powers-that-be have decided that sex presently determined by the individual, obviously it is logically impossible to claim that race is still a matter of genetics, let alone skin color. This means it is now a moral imperative for everyone to henceforth accept that an individual is whatever race he declares himself to be, regardless if he happens to be cis-racial or trans-racial.

Therefore, in the future, please do not refer to me as any of my three biologically state-sanctioned racial heritages, (White, Hispanic, and Asian, to be precise), but rather, as trans-racial, Esquimaux and proud.

Qagaasakung.

How “gay marriage” harms you

Remember when we were all assured that homogamy was about expanding human rights, not denying them?  Yeah, so it turns out that was a lie.

A Gresham bakery that refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple, prompting a state investigation, shut its doors. On Sunday, KGW stopped by Sweet Cakes by Melissa and found the bakery
completely empty. All counter tops, display cases and decorations were
gone. Hanging in the window was a sign from the Oregon Family Council that read “Religious freedom is under attack in Gresham.”

So, we now know that in addition to being bad for marriage – in Britain a woman will soon no longer legally become a “wife” while in France women can no longer become “mothers” – we know that homogamy is bad for jobs and the economy. This is precisely why free association – or as its opponents call it, discrimination – is a Constitutional right.

It is a sign of considerable societal decline that such a fundamental human right is no longer recognized in the USA.

UPDATE: This isn’t a theoretical matter.  It is a dangerous anti-civilizational abuse of human rights quite literally sweeping the Western USA:

A commercial photography business owned by opponents of same-sex
marriage violated New Mexico’s anti-discrimination law by refusing to
take pictures of a gay couple’s commitment ceremony, the state’s highest
court ruled unanimously Thursday. Elaine Huguenin, who owns Elane Photography with her
husband and is the business’s principal photographer, refused to
photograph the ceremony because it violated her religious beliefs.

The court held that “a commercial photography
business that offers its services to the public, thereby increasing its
visibility to potential clients” is bound by the New Mexico Human Rights
Act “and must serve same-sex couples on the same basis that it serves
opposite-sex couples.”

“Therefore, when Elane Photography refused to
photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony,” the court concluded, the
photographer “violated the NMHRA in the same way as if it had refused to
photograph a wedding between people of different races.”

This should make it clear that “anti-discrimination” laws are the foundation of human rights abuses.  They serve as justifiation for involuntary government-imposed servitude.

Congratulations, McRapey!

The Hugo Awards announces the 2013 awards:

LoneStarCon 3, the 71st World Science Fiction Convention, has
announced the 2013 Hugo Award winners. 1848 valid ballots were received
and counted in the final ballot.

BEST NOVEL
Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas, John Scalzi (Tor)

I think it is nice that McRapey is finally receiving the in-group validation he has so assiduously pursued over the years.  While I tend to view this award as additional evidence of the decline of professionally published SF/F, I’m sure Redshirts is a perfectly fine unauthorized derivative of a television series from 47 years ago.  It’s rated 3.7 stars out of 5 on Amazon, after all.

A literary sample from the Best Science Fiction Novel of 2013:


“Man, I owe you a blowjob,” Duvall said.
“What?” Dahl said.
“What?” Hester said.
“Sorry,” Duvall said. “In ground forces, when someone does you a favor you tell them you owe them a sex act. If it’s a little thing, it’s a handjob. Medium, blowjob. Big favor, you owe them a fuck. Force of habit. It’s just an expression.”


“Got it,” Dahl said.


“No actual blowjob forthcoming,” Duvall said. “To be clear”
“It’s the thought that counts,” Dahl said, and turned to Hester. “What about you? You want to owe me a blowjob, too?”
“I’m thinking about it ,” Hester said.

And they say SF is in decline. I was mildly amused to see that the Hugo Awards honored no less than five people who were involved in some way in my expulsion from SFWA.  This comment from Harsh also cracked me up:

“Scalzi now working on a new book called Cylon, the story of a misunderstood robot who’s picked on by mean old Colonial warriors.”

Fighting Father Time

The new season has started.  And it’s going to be a little harder than I anticipated. The challenge is due to switching to midfield. I don’t have enough power on my shot and the defenders seem to get younger and faster every year.  More importantly, I’m willing to pass the ball to our star striker, something too many of our mids simply would not do last year.

So, for the first game of the year, I’m not only the second-oldest man on the team, but I’m sick, I’m playing a new position, and, I discover, we have no substitutes.  Anything else?  Oh, right, here comes the International.  By International, I mean the former professional player who used to play for the national team. He’s just a little better than I am, in much the same way the Sun is a little larger than the Earth. But he’s a good guy, teases me a bit about the highly improbable goal I scored in our last meeting, and welcomes me to their field, which I’ve never seen before.

It starts off all right. Their left wing isn’t really following me back and I twice beat the left defender. Once I make a good pass back to the striker for a solid chance, the other time I slow down too much trying to decide whether to pass or shoot and the sweeper shows up to render the decision moot.  Then Giorgio decides not to pass me a through ball when he’s just outside the box, but rips it and puts the ball in the lower corner instead.  1-0.  Good decision, I think.

20 minutes in and although I’m playing well, I’m starting to breathe pretty hard.  And cough.  Suddenly, it seems like every time we lose the ball, I turn around and find myself 40 meters behind that bloody left wing.  And the International has observed that I’m having trouble getting back, so they start attacking down the left with regularity.  This is a problem, as behind me is the worst player on the team and he’s being forced to defend two whenever I get caught forward.  I also make the wrong decision at least three times when faced with a choice between covering man or ball. Our sweeper lets me know he is unhappy with my decisions.

Somehow, we fend them off, despite a ten minute period where the ball barely gets out of our half.  We make it to halftime, still leading 1-0.

The coach can see I’m in trouble, as when I’m not running, I’m doubled over, apparently trying to cough up a lung.  I also spend most of halftime on one long coughing jag. He tells me to stop worrying about getting forward and focus on defense.  We line up for the second half and I see they’ve got a fresh left wing, and even worse, he’s frisky, bolting diagonally every time it looks like the ball might come anywhere near.  It’s going to be a long 45 minutes.

He’s much quicker off the block than me, although I can match his top speed once I get going.  So, I pull out an American football trick out of the bag, namely, the cornerback’s 5-yard chuck.  I stay close on him, and every time he starts to bolt, he gets a little bump to accompany his first step.  Nothing the ref will call, but it’s enough to disrupt him.  Pretty soon, he’s furious, complaining about me grabbing his shirt – not at all true – and about how I’m knocking him off the ball, which is, in fact, the case.  They try four straight attacks down the side, trying to wear me out, but after the last one, when I take him down hard with a slide tackle right as he thought he’d gotten past me, he decides he’s had enough and takes himself out for a break.

The next guy is even faster and burns me the first time, but he’s less frisky and easier to anticipate.  We almost get a goal against the run of play, but it just goes wide.  I should have been there on the far post to clean up, but I’m a good 50 meters behind.  The first guy comes back in, then the second guy.  He’s still angry, so I laugh at him and give him a Dikembe Mutombo finger wag the first time I shut him down again.  At this point, I’ve decided I will kill him or die trying before I let him past me and he seems to suspect as much.

We survive until the 75th minute when we finally crack. One defender crashes into the back of another and takes him down, the other two defenders freeze, expecting a call, but the referee rightly shouts “play on”. One striker shoots, our keeper saves, but can’t hold onto the rebound and the other striker puts it in. 1-1.

The last 10 minutes is one corner kick after another.  We fight them all off, but then a big central midfielder puts one in the upper corner from 25 meters out; there was nothing anyone could have done.  They get one more to put us away 3-1; my only consolation is that, against all expectations, none of them were down to me. We shake hands. The International is a good sport and points out that we played them tough, we just ran out of gas. 

I watch Ender play. His team loses too, by the same score, but he has a great game, bails out his keeper twice by clearing balls on the line, and although he gets beaten three or four times, he doesn’t make any mental mistakes. He reminds me a little of Jaap Stam; he is an imperious defender and what he lacks in speed he makes up for with power and patience.  He’s in a good mood after the game; he knows they were beaten but they were not defeated. He’s beginning to understand the difference.

Fun with atheists

This is amusing for several reasons, particularly the way in which the atheist clearly has no sense of the extent to which he is overreacting.  Barry posted the following review of TIA on GoodReads:


Very good, provided logical and philosophical arguments
against atheism rather than the general apologetics which rely on
historical records and such.”

That’s it. Positive, descriptive, and succinct.  And it inspired the following response from an atheist named abc.

“well i tend to disagree i didnt find it logical,it was more lying by
omission and selective use of imformation with no acknowledgement of the
contrast.”

To which Barry, quite reasonably, responded:

“Really, what parts do you think were actually ‘lying by omission? Or
did you actually read the book. I have heard this over and over from
evangelical atheists. What was misrepresented? What was lying? I
think this is just a drive by posting.”

Thereby inspiring the following response, which is so over-the-top it almost sounds more like an agnostic with a sense of humor trolling Goodreads than the usual socially autistic atheist.  Especially the bit about the burger.  But whether it is real or not, it is funny.

“Do not label.You have no right what so ever to label people,no
bullying.None what so ever.Do you know what ‘evangelist’ means?’A person
who seeks to convert other people to christian faith,especially by preaching’ (source:wikipedia) And what is an atheist:someone who doesn’t
believe in existence of god.Now an evangelist in his nature can’t be an
atheist and an atheist not a christian.it’s like saying ‘a guilty
innocent’.Now that having been said i’ll come to the other part,the fact
that writer chose to dismiss the argument of Dawkins etc,by picking up
parts he wanted to and not trying to provide a complete analysis of
their work.He should also have acknowledged where they pointed out
religion sanctioned violence.For he knew it to be true he failed to
acknowledge it.That is not what i believe unbiased and
comprehensive.Being critical of it or not he should have mentioned it.he
omitted stuff that he thought he couldn’t argue with.Now that’s
injustice to the writers as that’s not all they said and Vox Day has not
refuted their argument.What about those he hasn’t taken up?That’s
‘omission to me and lying he was by implying that he had completely
refuted the argument of these writers or that his work was complete or
comprehensive.Leaving out stuff he has failed to acknowledge he did no
allow the writers work a fair analysis.For omitting stuff and implying
to have refuted all the work of theses writers is lying buy omission to
me.The writer using modes and interpretations he wanted to constituted
to me as ‘omission’.When he makes comparisons with today’s world and
statistics he fails to acknowledge sectranian issues that have
perpetuated and bred violence.Abuse of women sanctioned by religion,the
writers may not have highlighted that but if Vox Day was setting about
to do what was logical he should have included that.And called black
,black and white ,white(no racism)What he fails to say is that
islam,christanity,jewism etc all allow violence in many forms.he chose
to focus on statistic of his choice and i which i believe not to be
independent related to crime,now pray forgive me,were we talking about
that?No.So he choses what to say and what to say it about.another thing
if the writers(Dawkins etc.) were talking about the criminality of a
religious person,that is entirely different from whether religion
sanctions criminal behaviour or not.Well i couldn’t understand what you
have heard over and over from whom ever you have heard it from.Hearing
something over and over does not make it wrong.i dont know what you have
heard so i cant begin to decide on what it is but if a black person
were to campaign over and over racism was wrong,that dosen’t discredit
the truth of his actions.and if this book has all the flaws that it is
accused of ‘over and over’ they wont descredit that that is what it
is.(P.S the term writer/writers is used for Dawkins etc. unless implied
otherwise)That is my opinion and i wont want to take this any further.I
am going to go have a burger,i am feeling light headed.“

Sometimes, when dealing with this sort of atheist, it is best to simply back slowly away and be sure to make no sudden movements.

Correia on the moral imperative of public school attendance

In which he responds to the much-discussed Slate article concerning it being evil to send children to private school:

If You Send Your Kid to Private School, You Are a Bad Person
A Manifesto

No kidding. It is actually subtitled “A Manifesto”. We’re off to a great start. 

By Allison Benedikt
You are a bad person if you send your children to private school. Not bad like murderer bad—

Wait… Are we talking actual bad murderer bad, or murderers that
liberals have the hots for bad, like Che Guevara? Or murderers that
liberals don’t like to own up to like Kermit Gosnell bad? Because you
know, liberals are into nuance and stuff. 

but bad like ruining-one-of-our-nation’s-most-essential-institutions-in-order-to-get-what’s-best-for-your-kid bad. 

So using a lot of unnecessary hyphens bad. 

So, pretty bad.

Apparently. But please, Allison, educate us poor knuckle draggers
why we should put the future of failing liberal institutions based on
outdated philosophies dating back to the industrial revolution over the
welfare of our children. 

I am not an education policy wonk: I’m just judgmental. 

Well you’re a liberal, so that goes without saying. 

But it seems to me that if every single parent sent every single child to public school, public schools would improve. 

And I can’t wait to hear how you figured this part out. Especially
since everybody is always whining about overcrowded classrooms, so when
a kid gets pulled out and sent to private school, you just freed up
more public school resources, and *gasp* the parent paying for private
school is still paying taxes which pay for the dumpy public school… but
hey, I’m getting ahead of myself. 

This would not happen immediately. It could take generations. Your
children and grandchildren might get mediocre educations in the
meantime, but it will be worth it, for the eventual common good. 

Wait… Let me get this right… I need to needlessly screw up my
children and grandchildren’s chances in the hope that maybe, just maybe,
our shitty public schools might be decent in forty or fifty years. And
this is the high note she picked to open her essay with. Holy shit.

I have to admit, I find it a bit difficult to get worked up over something this obviously stupid.  In addition to the fact that argumentum ad sensum is so logically fallacious that it isn’t even listed as a formal logical fallacy because so few people are dumb enough to try making it, there is a fundamental flaw in the idea that increased patronage will improve a failing product.

Think about it.  When a restaurant’s food or service is sub-par, does expanding the size of its clientele tend to improve either or make them worse? When a retail store doesn’t have anything people want to buy, does an increase in customers tend to improve what is found on offer? When a government is corrupt and awful, does its governance tend to improve with the number of citizens over which it holds authority?

We can readily observe that the opposite is reliably true.  Therefore, by her own dubious measure, the moral imperative of improving the quality of the public schools, we can only conclude that it is evil to send one’s child to a public school.  In fact, since positive change tends to be inspired by people abandoning an institution and thereby forcing the institution to respond, there is a moral imperative for parents to improve the public schools by taking their children out of them.

It’s a pretty hapless argument when, by one’s own self-selected metric, one somehow manages to make the case for the exact opposite.  While the article may be little more than Slate attempting to troll the sane public for linkbait, remember that there are no shortage of white progressives who genuinely believe what this woman is writing.

However, while I very much disagree with the idea that private school attendance is evil, I will say that it is suboptimal. Private school is still subject to the group education speed limit on learning, and while there is more accountability than with public schools, the parent is still putting primary responsibility for the child’s education into the hands of strangers. Homeschooling offers more of the positive benefits of private education while being subject to none of the disadvantages.

Book Review: Impaler I

Impaler is a well written alternate history, marred with some
unfortunate anachronistic insertions of modern sensibilities. I would
also add that it is not for the faint of heart; fight sequences are
brutal and gory, torture is a regular occurrence, and pederasty forms a
foundational portion of the story.

Paulk effectively captures the
feeling of the time period for the most part, both its religiousness as
well as its savagery. She makes Vlad an understandable character,
while not shying away from the reality of of the violence of the times
and what was necessary for the man who would be king.

The primary
criticisms I have of this book is that while it for the most part aims
to be a gritty, historically based tale, it has a few elements that
break the willing suspension of disbelief. First, Vlad forbids the rape
and pillaging that regular accompanies a conquering army. This is
almost believable, and I would have given it a pass, had not other
issues come into play.

Towards the end of the book, some of the child
victims of pederasty engage in homosexual behavior. Not only does Vlad
give them a free pass, but he actively argues both an Orthodox priest
and a Catholic priest into submission. This is so absurd it is beyond
description. Further, he references in his arguments with the priests
his well-read nature in the Scriptures as well as having compared
translation notes. It is unlikely that most priests were even so
conversant in the Scriptures at that time, let alone the nobles (who
were in turn taught by the priests). A well educated noble would have
been able to read and perhaps do his own accounts, but not engage in
Scriptural debates. Similarly, a little later, he also reveals he is
conversant in Jewish treatises as well. Simply put, this is laughable
for the time.

Those criticisms not withstanding, Impaler was an
interesting read and cleverly written. I would not recommend it for
the tender hearted due to the violent content, but fans of historical
fiction and alternate histories will likely enjoy it.

NB: This is the first of the three volunteer reviews.  This one was written by DK.