Two schools of customer care

Now, I have no standing to tell Tor Books how it should run its business or interact with its customers. But I do find the difference between the two rival schools of thought on the matter to be pretty astonishing when you compare and contrast them. One of our customers recently sent us this note

An unsolicited endorsement….

Recently I took advantage of a “buy vol 1 and get vol 2 free” offer from Castalia House on a Friday. Saturday I opened my email to see two links to the books.

I clicked vol 1 and it downloaded, I clicked vol 2 and got the message “you have reached your download limit”..

I sent an email asking for the link to be reset, I expected to hear a reply on Monday.

But instead (on a Saturday), I received an email apologizing and asking me about the format I needed. I replied and within a few minutes received an email with vol 2 attached. (on a Saturday!)

That is the definition of good customer service.

I fear, however, that we completely failed to call him a neo-nazi or an unrepentant racist homophobe at any point in the process. Now, every company has different ideas about how to best interact with their customers, and I expect there is probably something to be said for hurling vituperative insults at people you would like to buy things from you. Precisely what that might be, I have no idea, but then, we’re relatively new to the publishing game. I know we have a lot to learn.

I guess I’m just a techno-caveman. I don’t understand these newfangled means of “marketing”, all this flashy “social media”, all these “tweets” and “follows” and “likes”.

Is it a sort of Soup Nazi spin? You know, “no books for you!” Does anyone know of any market research indicating precisely what insults tend to be most effective in improving brand loyalty?

And would “buy our bad-to-reprehensible books, racist neo-nazi homophobes!” be a good place to start?

Descent into darkness

 VDH warns of the end of an age:

History is not static and it does not progress linearly.  There was more free speech and unimpeded expression in 5th-century
Athens than in Western Europe between 1934-45, or in Eastern Europe
during 1946-1989. An American could speak his mind more freely in 1970
than now. Many in the United States had naively believed that the
Enlightenment, the U.S. Constitution, and over two centuries of American
customs and traditions had guaranteed that Americans could always take
for granted free speech and unfettered inquiry.

That is an ahistorical assumption. The wish to silence, censor, and
impede thought is just as strong a human emotion as the desire for free
expression — especially when censorship is cloaked in rhetoric about
fairness, equality, justice, and all the other euphemisms for not
allowing the free promulgation of ideas.

George Orwell devoted his later years to warning us that while the
fascist method of destroying free expression was easily identified
(albeit only with difficulty combatted), the leftwing totalitarian
impulse to squelch unpopular speech was far harder to resist — couched
as it was in sloganeering about the “people” and “social justice.” 

He’s right. The descent into the Dark Ages will not end well. It never has in the past. We must fight the barbarians at every step, within and without, because even though we will probably lose, we will preserve the seeds from which future civilizations will grow.

The rules of the game

VFM 0007 illustrates why the Supreme Dark Lord does not leave the philosophizing to his minions:

I’m not entirely at ease with this. It doesn’t seem just to demand that she be fired for her personal opinions. Would someone explain how it is, please?

The rules of the game of Cultural War, as defined by the SJWs, is that when a member of the other side is foolish enough to overstep the current PR bounds, their employment is a legitimate target. See: Brandon Eich. Or see: every attempt to DISQUALIFY and expel and blackball and disassociate me for the last ten years. Remember that a single tweeted link to a measured response to a vile personal attack was all it took justify the SFWA witch hunt against me, a witch hunt in which Tor Books Senior Editor and Manager of Science Fiction Patrick Nielsen Hayden not only participated, but co-orchestrated. Note the dates below.

John Scalzi @scalzi
I just renewed my @sfwa membership!
2:18 PM – 14 Aug 2013

P Nielsen Hayden ‏@pnh Aug 14
@scalzi So did I! What a coincidence! @sfwa

If a CEO can lose his job for donating to a successful political campaign in the past, an Associate Publisher can, and should, lose her job for attacking her publishing house’s own authors and customers. That is not only just, it is entirely fair play. It doesn’t matter if Gallo apologizes or not. Eich apologized even though he did nothing wrong and he was still pressured into resigning.

Gallo issued an unapology under pressure from her employer and she will probably end up issuing another one before she eventually resigns. Unless, of course. Mr. Doherty or someone higher up the chain finally does what should have been done yesterday and fires her. If someone at Castalia House were ever to attack our authors or customers in that way, they wouldn’t even be given the chance to apologize. They would be fired on the spot. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, go directly out the door. The fact that neither Mr. Doherty nor Mr. Patrick Nielsen Hayden saw fit to fire Ms Gallo for cause speaks volumes about where their priorities are.

Those priorities, of course, are their prerogative. Unlike Tor Books, everyone at Castalia House, from our volunteers to our Publisher, respects and values our authors. We value every single one of them, even those with whom we inevitably disagree on one issue or another. We value our customers as well, and as those who have had the occasional problem with getting their books delivered know, we go out of our way to take care of them even if the problem is on their end.

The idea of actually attacking them is the polar opposite of our attitude towards our customers. Without our customers, we not only don’t exist, we have no reason to exist. Tor Books appears to have forgotten that.

Stephen Ashby is nevertheless dubious:

You expect a resignation? I can see why you want one, but I don’t see what would lead you to expect it. Personally I expect Tor will simply pretend the matter is dealt with, and if you don’t accept that then they will claim you’re the one being unreasonable.

Absolutely. I expect one because I don’t believe Tom Doherty or Patrick Nielsen Hayden are entirely stupid. If they don’t accept her resignation soon, then I expect Macmillan, who I don’t believe to be stupid in any way, shape, or form, to not only fire Gallo but also remove those executives who have been derelict in their management duties.

The further away one is from the cultural battle in SF/F, the more totally inexcusable Gallo’s behavior appears. Especially from the purely corporate perspective. Not only was Ms Gallo’s attitude and statement in direct conflict with the Macmillan Code of Conduct, it is is direct conflict with one of the most basic rules of business: cherish your customers and treat them with care and respect.

Many of us are waiting to see how Tor is going to respond. If Mr. Doherty thinks his initial statement is sufficient to conclude the matter, he is woefully mistaken. If no further action is forthcoming I expect that more than a few people, myself included, will be publicly endorsing the boycott for which some writers and SF readers have already called.

Mr. Doherty, with the greatest possible respect to you as an individual:  until Tor publicly dissociates itself from the outrageous positions taken by the individuals I have named (all of them), publicly rebukes those concerned, and takes steps to make sure that no such statements are ever again made by senior members of the company, I shall be unable to believe any assurances that their views are not those of Tor.  Actions speak louder than words – and so does the absence of actions.  All Tor has offered is words.  It’s time for actions.  What is Tor going to, not say, but DO about the situation? – because unless and until it does the right thing, others are going to do what they believe to be necessary and appropriate under the circumstances.

There is very little time left to address these issues before this situation gets out of control.  For the sake of all of us in the SF/F community, I hope Tor uses it wisely.

You can leave your own comments on Mr. Doherty’s statement at Tor.com. And speaking of management duties… Malwyn? It appears #7 wants further instruction in the art of proper minionhood.

An unapology, unaccepted

Tom Doherty, Publisher of Tor Books, disavows Irene Gallo’s views, but does absolutely nothing to resolve the situation.

Last month, Irene Gallo, a member of Tor’s staff, posted comments about
two groups of science fiction writers, Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies,
and about the quality of some of the 2015 Hugo Award nominees, on her
personal Facebook page. Ms. Gallo is identified on her page as working
for Tor. She did not make it clear that her comments were hers alone.
They do not reflect Tor’s views or mine. She has since clarified that
her personal views are just that and apologized to anyone her comments
may have hurt or offended….

Tor employees, including Ms. Gallo, have been reminded that they are
required to clarify when they are speaking for Tor and when they are
speaking for themselves. We apologize for any confusion Ms. Gallo’s
comments may have caused. Let me reiterate: the views expressed by Ms.
Gallo are not those of Tor as an organization and are not my own views. 
Rest assured, Tor remains committed to bringing readers the finest in
science fiction – on a broad range of topics, from a broad range of
authors.

D. Jason Fleming points out that Irene Gallo, Associate Publisher of Tor.com and Creative Director of Tor Books, didn’t actually apologize and is clearly of the same mind still.

She does
not apologize for impugning the characters of a very large number of
people. She does not apologize for impugning authors who work for her
employer, in particular. She does not apologize for her immaturity in
prancing about demonstrating that she’s not part of a tribe she hates.
She does not apologize for her bigotry in any way, shape, or form.

She only apologizes for the feelings of people who might have been hurt by what she said.

What she said, then, must still stand.

 So what did she actually say?

I don’t know about the rest of the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies she called right-wing extremists and neo-nazis, or the authors she described as writing “bad-to-reprehensible works”, or everyone she called “unrepentantly racist, misogynist, and homophobic”, but as for me, I’m not hurt. So why is she apologizing for nonexistent events she hypothesizes rather than her rank unprofessionalism, her shameless bigotry, and her unprovoked attack on the right two-thirds of SF/Fdom? Especially when she still hasn’t informed us whose works are bad and whose are reprehensible.

I don’t want an apology. I don’t expect an apology.

I expect a resignation.

That was fast

I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a faster government U-turn:

Breaking: David Cameron climbs down on ‘back me or resign’ Downing Street has forced into a climb-down over whether Government ministers will have to resign if they want to campaign for Britain to leave the European Union, reports our Political Editor Peter Dominiczak.

Number 10 insisted that David Cameron “has not set out” whether “collective responsibility” will apply at the in-out referendum, which could be held next year.

Mr Cameron’s spokeswoman insisted that the Prime Minister had only said that members of the Government would have to resign during the renegotiation phase leading up to the announcement of a referendum if they wish to campaign for Britain to leave the EU.

Mr Cameron has not made a decision about whether ministers would have to quit if they campaign for a British exit, Downing Street claimed. It appears to leave open the possibility of ministers being able to campaign for Britain to leave the EU.

It sounds rather like the Prime Minister learned that he was about to lose most of his ministers and find himself facing a vote of no confidence only weeks after his big electoral victory.

I don’t think the usual kabuki is fooling anyone this time around. The EU isn’t going to cut Britain any slack, and even if they did, it wouldn’t matter because they could take it back anytime in the future. Sovereign or slave-state, that is the only relevant question.

SF war to the knife

One would expect Peter Grant to recognize one:

I’ve had a couple of threatening e-mails from supporters of Ms. Gallo’s position, warning me that if I (and/or other indie authors) call for a boycott of Tor books, they’ll call for a boycott of my/our books in return.  This made me laugh out loud.  As those of you who’ve read my books will know, I don’t think I can be described as ‘progressive’ or ‘SJW’.  Heck, read the header of this blog – it’ll tell you in a nutshell my position on most things!  I have grave doubts whether readers of the progressive persuasion have ever bought my books – so why would a boycott from that part of the reading spectrum hold any fears for me?

No.  It’s becoming increasingly clear that the problem lies in the corporate culture that’s taken over at Tor Books and Tor.com.  Four individuals currently or previously associated with Tor’s management and publishing activities at a senior level have now made statements that I can only regard as biased beyond logical comprehension.  They are Patrick Nielsen Hayden (manager of science fiction books at Tor);  his wife Teresa Nielsen Hayden (listed by Wikipedia as a ‘consulting editor’ for Tor Books, and formerly a senior editor there – also the publisher of the well-known web log and forum ‘Making Light’);  Moshe Feder (also a consulting editor for Tor Books);  and Irene Gallo (Associate Publisher of Tor.com and Creative Director of Tor Books).  Certain Tor-published authors, primarily John Scalzi but also including others, have spouted the ‘party line’ in their support and/or on their own account as well.

There’s an old military saying when bad things happen:  “Once may be an accident.  Twice may be coincidence.  Three or more times is enemy action.”  In the same way, I could understand one senior Tor representative holding such views.  I might even accept two.  Four is too many.  This is not coincidence.  It’s concerted, organized, deliberate enemy action.  Tor as a publisher appears to either espouse, or tolerate (and actively encourage), views like this.  The utterances of these individuals appear to indicate that the company supports lies, slander, libel and viciousness as debating and/or promotional tactics.  I hope that the reality belies that appearance;  but that’s for Tor to say, not me – and back up their words with actions.  Weasel words will no longer be acceptable in any way, shape or form.

THIS CANNOT BE ALLOWED TO CONTINUE.

It won’t be. Let them threaten. What are they going to do, continue to not buy books from Castalia House, from Baen, and from independents? Are they going to keep not reading what they repeatedly proclaim to be terribly written bad-to-reprehensible works without ever having read them? What are they going to do, have the Board vote me out of SFWA again? Are they going to continue not giving Nebulas to John Wright, and Sarah Hoyt, and Larry Correia, and Brad Torgersen? The reality is that we have the decisive advantage here because we have long supported them.

But we don’t have to.

I have can count dozens of Tor and Forge books on my bookshelves surrounding me, and that doesn’t count the bookshelves in the halls, in the bedrooms, and in the attic. But I don’t have to buy any more. Why should I, when the Senior Editor of Science Fiction at Tor has done nothing for me except insult and attack me for ten years now? A lot of people are getting sick of their constant bullshit, even people who have absolutely nothing to do with me in any way, shape, or form.

“I’m an author, involved with the publishing industry. Does that mean that I have the moral authority to point out to you that she is making actual, factually untrue statements here? She might be a really wonderful individual, in person, but her facts are dead wrong, bordering on libelous, and taking a position on a hotbutton issue really undercuts Tor’s credibility as a politically neutral, or even tolerant, business.”
– Jim Butcher, author, The Dresden Files

Apparently the bestselling and Hugo-nominated Mr. Butcher didn’t much appreciate being described as an author of “bad-to-reprehensible” books.

Back in April, Larry Correia and I, among others, encouraged everyone to leave Tor Books out of it. We made it clear that our problems were with certain individuals at Tor, not the organization itself. But as Peter Grant points out, Irene Gallo’s comments, to say nothing of Moshe Feder’s and John Scalzi’s (now that the organization has bet its future on him, Scalzi is relevant in this regard), appear to indicate that we were wrong and our problem is with the organization as it is presently comprised after all.

What do you think? I’m interested in hearing everyone’s arguments, pro and con.

UPDATE: I would certainly hope that they didn’t.


2h2 hours ago

Happy Monday! We appreciate your comments & would like to remind you that the views of our employees do not reflect those of the publisher.

ONE BRIGHT STAR vs THE WASP FACTORY

Or, if you prefer, Phil Sandifer vs Vox Day. This is the Pex Lives podcast featuring the interview-debate I previously mentioned concerning the perceived merits and demerits of John C. Wright’s Hugo-nominated novella “One Bright Star to Guide Them” and the late Iain M. Banks’s much-lauded debut novel The Wasp Factory.

You can also download an MP3 of the nearly two-hour interview (94MB). I understand a transcript will be forthcoming.

The Devil’s own

It’s not at all hard to understand why Phil Sandifer so dislikes “One Bright Star to Guide Them”. Indeed, the strength of his distaste for it is a testimony to its depth and power, to say nothing of its appeal to Friends of Narnia, as can be seen in this exchange that took place outside the actual literary debate.

PS: From my perspective, this is the most basic disagreement that exists between Vox and me. Both Vox and I look at the problem of the world being far more complex than even an extremely intelligent person like ourselves can hope to fully understand. Vox’s reaction is to give complete trust to an unknowable higher being with the capacity for full and total understanding of the world. Mine is to instead try to fully understand my experience of the world, a task that is still staggeringly difficult, but at least feels accomplishable within the scope of a human lifetime and intellect.

I view his approach as a horrifying act of submission to an authority that is at best imaginary and at worst illegitimate. He views mine as nihilistic solipsism.

VD: I think you need to revise that. At best imaginary, at worst legitimate. Your biggest concern isn’t that God exists and His authority is not legitimate. It’s that He exists and it is.

PS: That’s actually not a concern of mine, although we should be precise here and distinguish between his authority and his power. I am profoundly concerned that your god exists and wields the power you describe. It is literally my greatest existential fear; a terror that has genuinely kept me up at night, because in the event that it is true I am knowingly signing myself up for an eternity of torment that goes beyond anything I am capable of imagining.

I have no concern whatsoever that his authority is legitimate, however. It is not, at least over what I understand to be me, Philip Sandifer. The self that I am solipsistically invested in has an independent consciousness from your god. I am but a sinner, cast out into a material world and fundamentally separated from your god. But where you view my sin as my imprisonment in a lowly, materialist prison, I view it as my freedom from the tyrant you choose to serve.

To misquote Blake, I am of the devil’s party and know it.

It is not uncommon for people to ask me why I treat atheists, particularly those of the militant or evangelical variety, with such open contempt. The reason is very simple. The only way they can be reached, the only way they can even begin thinking rationally about Christianity instead of thoughtlessly reacting to it, is for their pride to be broken first. Since their pride tends to revolve around their intelligence, it usually requires a higher intelligence to break it and I happen to be reasonably well-equipped in that regard.

It’s not knowledge that keeps men like Phil from submitting to the Most High, to the Creator God of the Universe, it is pride in the independent consciousness that they possess as a gift from the very tyrant they refuse to serve. As an arrogant man myself, I recognize that fierce and independent pride when I see it. I even admire it, to a certain extent. But I also know its futility, and worse, its sheer pointlessness.

Does the jar demand the potter admire its beauty? Is the jar foolish enough to be proud of its existence separate from the very mind that conceived it, the very hands that shaped it and brought it into being? Does the jar so lack perception that it fails to grasp it can be unmade as easily as it was made by its maker?

In what, O jar, is your petty pride?

How strange it is that those who refuse to grovel before God so readily bow before other men and genuflect before some of the most foolish ideas of Man ever conceived. And how pointless, when we know that one day every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess, that Jesus Christ is Lord. Serve freely or defy as you see fit, because every path leads to the same destination, submission before the Almighty.

A Sisyphean task

A File 770 commenter attempts to counteract a common SJW lie:

Pluviann on June 7, 2015 at 3:02 am said:
OK, I usually lurk, but I see people constantly saying that Beale supports acid attacks on women. The original quote for this is from Pharyngula where Beale says:

[F]emale independence is strongly correlated with a whole host of social ills. Using the utilitarian metric favored by most atheists, a few acid-burned faces is a small price to pay for lasting marriages, stable families, legitimate children, low levels of debt, strong currencies, affordable housing, homogenous populations, low levels of crime, and demographic stability. If PZ has turned against utilitarianism or the concept of the collective welfare trumping the interests of the individual, I should be fascinated to hear it.

Beale is not saying: ‘I support acid attacks’.

Beale is saying: ‘Stupid atheists claim to believe in utilitarian ethics, but they are clearly too stupid to follow their own ethics to their logical conclusions, if they did then they would support acid attacks.’

This is a classic example of Beale’s well known rhetorical slipperiness, but I think it’s worth being clear when you quote him. Why say that he believes in acid attacks which is not true, when, from the same quote, you can say that he believes female independence is correlated with high crime or expensive housing? If you say that he supports acid throwing when he doesn’t then you just give him ideological fodder. He can say: ‘See, those silly SJWs are spreading lies about me and don’t understand my position on anything.’

Pluviann is correct of course. Except that I can do rather more than that. I can point out that the evil SJWs always lie and I can prove it by pointing out that they are lying about me again by knowingly misrepresenting my statements and opinions.

In answer to Pluviann’s question, the reason that the SJWs keep lying about this is because accurately representing my statements will not suffice to stoke the outrage they are hoping to inspire. They don’t want to honestly debate the long-term consequences of pro-feminist social policies, they simply want to drum up enough support to shout me down and disqualify me in order to minimize my intellectual influence.

As I have repeatedly said, I do not support acid attacks. I do not support honor killings. I do not support the Taliban’s attack on Malala Yousafzai. Anyone who claims that I support any of those things, or supported any of them at any time in the past, is lying, for the obvious reason that I am neither an atheist nor a utilitarian.

This comment also amused me for reasons that will soon become clear:

Stefan Mitev on June 7, 2015 at 7:43 am said:
Does anyone on the Puppies seriously expect anyone at Tor to listen to them at all after they spent the last few months (and in TB’s case, years) insulting the company, its employees and some of its main authors and accusing them of fixing the Hugos? LOL.

No, we don’t expect anyone at Tor to listen. But we suspect there are those at Pan Macmillan who will.

This comment was considerably more on point:

AV on June 7, 2015 at 7:56 am said:
Disgusting comments by Irene Gallo. Where is your professionalism? Why are you attacking customers and authors of your own publishing house? This is the third bigwig at Tor who took a cheap shot at their own authors and customers. Does anyone there have any common sense? Where the hell is Tom?

It does appear that the inmates are running the Tor asylum of late. They certainly appear to have a creative approach to customer relations.

The endless “temporary”

Paul Krugman asks why he is a Keynesian:

Noah Smith
sort-of approvingly quotes Russ Roberts, who views all macroeconomic
positions as stalking horses for political goals, and declares in
particular that

Krugman is a Keynesian because he wants bigger government. I’m an anti-Keynesian because I want smaller government.

OK, I’m not going to
clutch my pearls and ask for the smelling salts. Politics can shape our
views, in ways we may not recognize. But I’m aware of that risk, and
make a regular practice of asking myself whether I’m letting that kind
of bias slip in. In fact, I lean against studies that seem too much in
tune with my political preferences. For example, I’ve been aggressively
skeptical of studies that seem to show a negative relationship between
inequality and growth, precisely because that result is so convenient
for my political tribe (which doesn’t mean that it’s wrong.)

So, am I a Keynesian
because I want bigger government? If I were, shouldn’t I be advocating
permanent expansion rather than temporary measures? Shouldn’t I be for
stimulus all the time, not only when we’re at the zero lower bound? When
I do call for bigger government — universal health care, higher Social
Security benefits — shouldn’t I be pushing these things as job-creation
measures? (I don’t think I ever have). I think if you look at the
record, I’ve always argued for temporary fiscal expansion, and only when
monetary policy is constrained. Meanwhile, my advocacy of an expanded
welfare state has always been made on its own grounds, not in terms of
alleged business cycle benefits.

In other words, I’ve
been making policy arguments the way one would if one sincerely believed
that fiscal policy helps fight unemployment under certain conditions,
and not at all in the way one would if trying to use the slump as an
excuse for permanently bigger government.

This all sounds very well and good, except for one thing. Do you EVER recall Paul Krugman once calling for a REDUCTION in government spending at any point of the business cycle? Do you ever remember him recommending spending cuts or tighter monetary policy at all?

In 2013, Krugman wrote: “I’ve often argued on this blog and in the column that now is a particularly bad time to cut spending.” And this was four years into the Fed-reported economic recovery. Last year, he pointed out that “Prima facie, cutting spending depresses economies.” Even looking back to the heights of the 2007 and 1999 booms, I can’t find any evidence that Krugman called for fiscal contraction or anything but more spending and more taxes.

In any event, we already know why Krugman is a Keynesian. He read Foundation, he wants to be Hari Seldon, and Keynesianism permits him to wallow in the delusion of controlling future events.