Tag: books

Odds and False Ends

A few things. First, I’ve got two related posts up at White Bull that may be of interest to those who are either a) trying to break into a new industry or b) interested in the history of the game industry. I used my own experience of going from a complete outsider to an industry oldtimer as a practical example; the first post is here and contains a link to the second one at the end.

Second, if you’d like to see what the very large and very pretty Hypergamouse hardcover looks like, there are some pictures up at Sigma Game. The pictures and a video will go up on Arkhaven later. And speaking of Arkhaven, the Dark Herald has a detailed discussion of one of my favorite books by Tanith Lee, Delusion’s Master, that is well worth reading by anyone who enjoys the dark side of fantasy.

Third, we’ve opened up the SOULSIGMA campaign again for the nine backers whose backings didn’t go through due to some vagaries of the way the FMC system interacts with the payment processor; apparently I selected a suboptimal setting when setting it up. So if you’re one of those nine backers, or if you weren’t but you’d like to jump in there ex post facto, you can back the album here.

And finally, a reader had a question about Umberto Eco’s work and how it relates to conspiracy theory:

I have reread Foucault’s Pendulum and I have read The Name of the Rose and The Prague Cemetery. You said in your 2013 top ten list of books that “Perhaps my subscription to the conspiracy theory of history is one reason I rate Foucault’s Pendulum so highly, but I stand firmly by my high regard for Eco.” I have tried to get a more subtle read on Eco’s work rereading “FP” but It seems to me he is very much interested on demystifying these tropes, for example by constructing a plot in which the conspiracionist take the mad theories from three leftist editors very seriously and end up killing the main architect of the madness because the only way to salvage his hurt pride (the novel is very funny in the constant humillition of Belbo, specially the scenes in which Lorenza is involved) is to not reveal the secret: that there is no secret, it is all false.

In the “PC” something similar happens, where all the conspiracies of the late 19 century are pinned under a despicable guy who has no values but the love of money and will invent anything, including a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. So Eco gives us a fictional account of the birth of a text, “The protocols of the elders of Sion”, that in the official history is considered to be a libel. Now I am sure these things don’t escape you, because you are much more smarter than me, but I still don’t see how his work vindicates your phrase I quoted. Is it just that you enjoy these themes treated in such a beautiful and sophisticated way, even though the author does not believe in them? Or is it the classic the message trascends the writter, and the story is more true than he seems to believe?

The reader seems to have a fundamental problem understanding the concept of a novel and its relation to the writer. Contra his assumptions, he has no idea what Eco actually thought about any of these things, which would be true of most halfway-decent authors, but is particularly true of an author who just happens to be a world expert on semiotics, signs, and symbols.

The idea that Eco is demystifying anything is absurd on its face. He loved myths, fables, and conspiracies. To look at his various explanations for them as attempts to reduce them to harmlessness in the service of the mainstream Narrative in which nothing happens for a reason and nobody accomplishes anything is to fundamentally miss the point. Eco was more akin to someone who loves puzzles and enjoys putting them together, which is why anyone else who loves puzzles will enjoy reading his book; moreover, let’s not forget the concept of blown cover as cover.

Being a world-famous public intellectual, Eco would have known better than anyone that there are secrets that cannot be safely revealed to everyone. Ergo, what better way to reveal them than by doing so in an innocuous manner that purports to make it clear that the secrets, such as they are, don’t even exist, especially given the inarguable evidence that they do, in fact exist. And this is precisely the sort of interpretation that one could not possibly rule out, given Eco’s very puckish sense of humor.

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Copyright Must Reform

Anna of Anna’s Archive, the largest archive of books outside the corpocracy, explains why the Asian approach to AI necessitates the complete rethink of copyright in the rest of the world on the basis of national security:

When Z-Library faced shutdown, I had already backed up its entire library and was searching for a platform to house it. That was my motivation for starting Anna’s Archive: a continuation of the mission behind those earlier initiatives. We’ve since grown to be the largest shadow library in the world, hosting more than 140 million copyrighted texts across numerous formats — books, academic papers, magazines, newspapers, and beyond.

Me and my team are ideologues. We believe that preserving and hosting these files is morally right. Libraries around the world are seeing funding cuts, and we can’t trust humanity’s heritage to corporations either.

Then came AI. Virtually all major companies building LLMs contacted us to train on our data. Most (but not all!) US-based companies reconsidered once they realized the illegal nature of our work. By contrast, Chinese firms have enthusiastically embraced our collection, apparently untroubled by its legality. This is notable given China’s role as a signatory to nearly all major international copyright treaties.

We have given high-speed access to about 30 companies. Most of them are LLM companies, and some are data brokers, who will resell our collection. Most are Chinese, though we’ve also worked with companies from the US, Europe, Russia, South Korea, and Japan. DeepSeek admitted that an earlier version was trained on part of our collection, though they’re tight-lipped about their latest model (probably also trained on our data though).

If the West wants to stay ahead in the race of LLMs, and ultimately, AGI, it needs to reconsider its position on copyright, and soon. Whether you agree with us or not on our moral case, this is now becoming a case of economics, and even of national security. All power blocs are building artificial super-scientists, super-hackers, and super-militaries. Freedom of information is becoming a matter of survival for these countries — even a matter of national security.

Our team is from all over the world, and we don’t have a particular alignment. But we’d encourage countries with strong copyright laws to use this existential threat to reform them. So what to do?

Our first recommendation is straightforward: shorten the copyright term. In the US, copyright is granted for 70 years after the author’s death. This is absurd. We can bring this in line with patents, which are granted for 20 years after filing. This should be more than enough time for authors of books, papers, music, art, and other creative works, to get fully compensated for their efforts (including longer-term projects such as movie adaptations).

I could not agree more. Copyright doesn’t protect creators, it protects the corporations who buy up copyrights and utilize them to stifle innovation for decades. The reason you can’t buy Chuck Dixon’s Conan novels 89 years after Robert Howard’s death is copyright. The reason Amazon is free to demolish the legacy of Tolkien, and now James Bond, is copyright. The reason the worst people on the planet control the intellectual properties that people love is copyright.

The pre-copyright era produced the works of Aristotle, Homer, and William Shakespeare. The copyright era didn’t even protect Tanith Lee from Neil Gaiman ripping her off. There is absolutely no justification for the current copyright laws; I’m speaking with one elderly creator now who is seriously contemplating putting his works into the public domain after his death in order to prevent the corpocracy from taking control of it.

But the fact that copyright will put the entire Western corpocracy at a massive disadvantage should at least provide some impetus for things to move in a much more reasonable direction, particularly if the matter is brought to the God-Emperor’s attention.

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Ebooks at NDM Express

A few months ago, I did some groundwork with a large European distribution company to see if it was possible to set up an alternative to Amazon. Despite some initial intermediate-level interest, the project foundered for two reasons: a) the high-level decision makers weren’t willing to get sufficiently aggressive on the pricing and b) virtually none of the very authors the project was intended to save were interested in being saved.

Since I don’t believe in attempt to save people from themselves, and I’m perfectly content to permit every author and publisher who is dumb enough to rely upon Amazon see their revenues continue to decline, I abandoned my efforts. However, now that Amazon has turned ebooks into a walled-garden service by eliminating the ability to move books that one has purchased outside of Kindle, it’s necessary for Castalia to give people a means of actually purchasing our ebooks as a product.

Which is precisely what we have done courtesy of NDM Express. All of Castalia’s books, including the Library, History, and Cathedra books for which we control the digital rights, will be available via NDM Express. The books are in EPUB format, DRM-free, and will have a minimum price of $4.99. Other authors and publishers are welcome to sell their books there; at 25 percent, NDM will take a smaller percentage of the revenue than Amazon or Apple do.

Library, History, and Cathedra ebooks will sell for $9.99, but will be free to the appropriate subscribers. A code will be provided in the next few weeks, so don’t expect to download them today. Currently, there are two sections being set up, one with JDA’s ebooks, the other with the Castalia Library books. This is a brand new project, so although it is functional, please give it a few weeks to become fully operational. Eventually, we’ll get the digital Arkhaven books up there as well.

Authors and publishers who would like to make their books available there should contact NDM, not me. Below is an example of the standard cover we’ve developed for the Library books.

UPDATE: The first Castalia Library books are now up at NDM Express.

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You Don’t Own Your Ebooks

The wisdom of owning actual books printed on archival paper and bound in leather is once more confirmed, this time by Amazon:

Starting on February 26th, 2025, Amazon is removing a feature from its website allowing you to download purchased books to a computer and then copy them manually to a Kindle over USB. It’s a feature that a lot of Kindle users are probably not aware of, given books can be more easily sent to devices over Wi-Fi, but it’s especially useful for backing up purchases or converting them to other formats compatible with non-Kindle e-readers.

Amazon confirmed the removal of the book download feature in a statement to The Verge. “Customers can continue reading books previously downloaded on their Kindle device, and access new content through the Kindle app, Kindle for web, as well as directly through Kindle devices with WiFi capability,” said Amazon spokesperson Jackie Burke.

Once this feature goes away, you’ll still be able to manually copy ebook files and other documents to Kindles over USB using Amazon’s apps or third-party solutions like Calibre. You just won’t be able to download copies of your purchased books to a computer.

A comment from a former Amazon employee underlines the bitter irony.

I worked for the Kindle team at Amazon 2009-2011 when Kindle was brand new. It’s amazing to think that back in those days we thought we were working on a technology that may eventually replace most physical books and especially ironic to now think that the best way to maintain ownership over books and copies of controversial or “banned” books is to own physical copies.

Never trust the corpocracy. Every new freedom they give you turns out to be an illusion.

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Based Books Sale: Spring Edition

Tired of mainstream traditionally published books with their diversity checklist characters and tired social justice themes? Then check out the Spring 2025 Based Book Sale running through the end of the day, Tuesday February 18, where you’ll find nearly 300 books that defy the politically correct gatekeeping and deliver traditional storytelling that upholds the good, the beautiful, and the true. All for $0.99 or free!

Here are some of the early Based Book Sale leaders, and we have a host of new faces among the most popular authors. Top sellers in the first day of the sale included John C. Wright’s One Bright Star to Guide Them, Robert Kroese’s Starship Grifters, Steven G. Johnson’s Operation Vampire (Murphy’s War Book 1), EJ Fisch’s three-book Ziva Payvan trilogy, Kevin Bates’, Quarantine and Even if by Fire, Michael F. Kane’s After Moses, Ryan M. Patrick’s The Martian Incident and Lag Delay: A Technothriller (Grace Parkowski Thrillers), Zakalog the Great’s The Mayor of Christ Mountain, Gregory Michael’s Chloe’s Kingdom, Russell May’s long awaited Solarvoid, sequel to Eta Cancri, Richard Paolinelli’s Sea Dragon, Brian Heming’s Murder on the Stellar Schooner: Illustrated Detective Scifi, the five-volume Exile War boxed set by Bowen Greenwood, J.Z. Pitts Virtual Rebel: A Sci-Fi Action Adventure (The Haven Trilogy Book 1), Terra Nullius (Slipspace Book 1) by Zachary Forbes, Asterius (Timelessness) by Susana Imaginário, the Shoot the Devil 3: Militia of Martyrs anthology, by a host of talented authors, Christopher G. Nutall’s Ark Royal, Michael Dibaggio’s House of Refuge, and classic works by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, G.K. Chesterton.

My Favorite Japanese Novels

In the 35 years since I graduated with an East Asian studies degree, I’ve read a considerable amount of Japanese literature. So, my little contribution to Fandom Pulse is a list of my 10 favorite novels, with the caveat that only one novel per author was allowed.

Japanese literature is like no other. What the wedding is to the English novel, the suicide is to the Japanese novel. Furthermore, the absence of Christian sexual mores, the cultural inclination toward passivity and fatalism, and the lack of an individualist hero tradition will tend to strike the average Western reader as strange and, in some cases, even bordering on the perverse.

But the technical skill of Japanese novelists, combined with their very different takes on the human condition, makes Japanese literature one of the most interesting and rewarding literatures available for reading on the planet. Below are my favorite books by ten different Japanese authors translated into English, since I don’t read kanji, and a list of my ten favorite Japanese novels would amount to little more than an incomplete bibliography of Haruki Murakami.

Read the whole thing there. And yes, I’ve read Natsumi Soseki, Ryu Murakami, Kenzaburo Oe, Banana Yoshimoto, and all the other big names. This is a list of my favorite novels, not the technically best or most representative, or most important.

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The Most Based Book of All

Is A SEA OF SKULLS, apparently. The director of the Based Book Sale issues a report preparatory to the Spring sale, in which both Castalia and Arkhaven will be participating.

A Sea of Skulls by Vox Day took top honors. John C. Wright authored the next two most popular books. In second place was his first Starquest book, Space Pirates of Andromeda, followed by his 2016 Dragon Award winning Best Novel, Somewither. Vox Day closely follows in fourth and fifth place with A Throne of Bones (Arts of Dark and Light Book 1) and Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy (Arts of Dark and Light). In sixth place was sale newcomer, Devon Eriksen, with Theft of Fire: Orbital Space #1. Michael F. Kane secured seventh place honors with After Moses. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon came in eighth place. Based Book Sale perennial offering, The Hidden Truth was ninth. Henry Brown’s six-book Paradox series in a box set completed the top ten.

And you know, A SEA OF SKULLS is based. Speaking of which, the interiors of volumes I and II have just been printed for the leather editions.

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The Pointlessness of Posturing

Either a number of people associated with Baen Books are less dialed-in to what is happening on the business side than they believe themselves to be or they desperately need lessons in some of the basics of public relations.

  • PR 101: Never deny anything that you know someone else can prove.
  • PR 102: Never get into a fight with anyone who buys ink by the barrel.

Larry Correia posted a long-winded rant both on his blog and on X regarding the piece, opening with the personal attack, “So I hear certain people are trying to stir up outrage clicks spreading dumb rumors about some publishers again.”

Our article, however, does not contain any speculation, only a reporting of facts that have been verified and direct commentary from several Baen Books authors and employees, as previously noted.

Correia did, however, elaborate that he intends to diversify his book portfolio from Baen Books even further in the coming years. He said, “Here, I’ll even add to the freak out, I’m also going to be doing some pure indy stuff in the future too. Why? Because I can, and I want to see what happens when I do. It has been a long time since I’ve experimented in that, the market has changed a ton since then, and has a lot of potential. I like making money. Me doing an indy project might make money. Go figure.”

Many of Correia’s fans reacted to his rant, voicing support for the author and making odd comments mocking his “career-ending,” responding to everything he said but not any of the information in Fandom Pulse’s article, as Correia obfuscated as to what the topic was at hand.

Former Sad Puppy Sarah A. Hoyt, who was dropped from Baen due to her poor sales and is not an American, replied with a bizarre comment, “Yeah. People asked, so I actually read the idiocy. It’s all a thinly veiled tissue of hallucinations…. Having been the subject of such ‘reporting’ before, I’m not even amused.” It’s unclear what she’s talking about.

It doesn’t take a genius to observe that Baen Books is unlikely to survive the loss of Larry Correia to both a) another publisher and b) going independent. Perhaps some of the people quoted don’t know this, but Baen is 25 percent owned by Tor Books and has a very limited number of distribution slots through its distribution partner. As with most mainstream publishers, it is heavily dependent upon its bestselling author or two propping up the rest of its authors.

This is the problem that Tor Books faces as well. The reason John Scalzi was given a massive lead author contract was because Tor needed to replace Brandon Sanderson, the late Robert Jordan, and the game tie-in business that it lost, unfortunately for Tor and Scalzi, he has been unable to do so. He still sells, he just doesn’t sell well enough.

The fact that Larry Correia walked means that Baen Books couldn’t afford the right of first refusal to his new series, which is hardly surprising. I told Larry back in 2015 that he should go independent and I’ve expected to see him do so ever since Brandon Sanderson demonstrated how high the ceiling can be for an independent author. The fact that he was willing to prop up Baen for nearly ten years longer than he probably should have from a financial perspective is testimony to his loyalty and gratitude to his longtime publisher.

But Baen has been circling the drain for years anyhow, because its business practices are out of date. It ignored the authors it should have been courting – including Nick Cole, Jason Anspach, John C. Wright, JDA, and myself, among others – while also ignoring the advent of crowdfunding and the negative impact of Kindle Unlimited. And now its window of opportunity has closed.

People can preen and posture all they like, but what will be will be. And it’s both foolish and futile to get one’s panties in a bunch over educated observers simply noting what has happened, what is happening, and what is likely to happen. Let bygones be bygones and make hay while the sun is shining; just yesterday one of my more vehement past critics and I achieved mutual understanding on a potential future project with excellent prospects for both of us; whether we follow through on it or not, the mere fact of our discussion is a testimony to the professional approach to these things.

I may not be fond of John Scalzi, just to give one example, but if the man ever decides he wants to do a deluxe edition of Old Man’s War in leather, I’ll not only agree to work with him, I’ll guarantee him that we will make him a higher-quality and more attractive edition than Easton or Folio Society will give him. Because an important part of being professional is learning how to set aside one’s personal predilections.

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Forbes on The Folio Society

A gushing Forbes article on the importance and elegance of deluxe books:

When Joanna Reynolds first became CEO of The Folio Society in 2016, the London-based publishing company known for its beautifully illustrated hardcover editions of classic books had been steadily losing money for a decade and was on the verge of being sold. “It kind of lost its way,” Reynolds, a veteran of Time Life Europe and Reader’s Digest, tells me over Zoom. From its post-war inception in 1947, Folio operated as an annual book club, with members signing up to receive four titles a year. “That model everywhere had kind of died, really,” adds Reynolds. “So we [made] a complete change.”

That 21st century innovation not only required the phasing out of an obsolete business model, but also the expansion of what Folio could publish in terms of genre (i.e. moving into science fiction, fantasy, and children’s content), the number of books it could release a year (from four to between 40 and 50), and how those books were marketed to the public.

Most important, however, is maintaining a brand associated with handcrafted beauty and elegance. Every deluxe edition put out by Folio is made with the intention of having the resultant tome occupy prime real estate on a book lover’s shelf for years to come. Such commitment to visual sophistication attracts acclaimed authors, artists, and even fellow publishers like Marvel Entertainment.

Still, I couldn’t help noticing that the Forbes article left out one rather significant element that one would think would have been both timely and relevant.

Neil Gaiman has been removed from UK agent Casarotto Ramsay & Associates’ client list after the Good Omens writer has faced a string of sexual misconduct allegations over the past six months. The change to Casarotto Ramsay’s client list comes amid a wave of creative partners severing ties with Gaiman and his work. Anansi Boys publisher Dark Horse Comics has dropped the once-celebrated writer, while a UK stage production of Coraline was canceled this week.

The Terry Pratchett Estate has now cut ties to Gaiman as well. Apparently pTerry’s heirs have had their fill of Gaiman attempting to trade on a close friendship that was, at the very least, greatly exaggerated, if not entirely fabricated. A one-time co-writing experience is seldom indicative of being bestest buddies, especially when one of the co-writers a) did most of the work and b) is observably disinclined to ever repeat the experience.

Below is a screenshot of the Folio Society’s website from this very morning, only six months after the beginning of #GaimanGate. The reason all the novels by other authors are on the list of 32 (!) Gaiman-related books is because Folio asked Gaiman to provide their deluxe editions with forewords and introductions, although what a mediocrity like Gaiman could possibly have to say about Gene Wolfe defies belief. Now, doesn’t it seem a little odd that Forbes didn’t even ask Folio about this apparent contradiction between their oft-expressed social justice values and the particular authors they choose to feature?

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Peter Thiel Guts Baen Books

Fandom Pulse reports that Peter Thiel tried to buy Baen Books, was rebuffed, and responded by poaching their top authors and editors for a new science fiction and fantasy publishing house.

Baen Books has fallen into the trap of a lot of mainstream publishing, not building up a stable of modern talent to come up as the next generation… Enter Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal and Donald Trump Advisor with his giant venture capital fund. While he’d been in publishing before, he came to Baen Books with an offer to buy the company and inject capital to modernize it and preserve Baen for the next generation. Fandom Pulse spoke with multiple industry insiders who confirmed this buyout offer. While the details of the offer are not known, Toni Weisskopf, Editor in Chief of Baen Books, reportedly declined, but that didn’t stop Thiel’s hunger to enter the science fiction and fantasy space.

One Baen Books author who asked to be anonymous told Fandom Pulse that the company has a “kill switch” clause in every author contract that would make such a buyout impossible. Fandom Pulse was told that in the event the company sells, rights to books automatically revert to authors. This effectively prevents a sale of the company from occurring, as it would be worthless without the contracts of its top authors in place.

Thiel and his investment group were not deterred but decided to take over genre fiction themselves in a move that would take a lot of Baen’s top remaining talent with them.

Ark Press was formed as Thiel and his investors began a new publishing company to run in tandem with Passage Press, whose face became former Baen author D.J. Butler. Butler had been rumored to be on the shortlist to take over Baen Books once Toni Weisskopf retired and is well-liked in author circles, best-known for his book Witchy Eye, which was highly promoted by his long-time friend Larry Correia.

Fandom Pulse reached out to Butler to confirm Thiel’s investment group involvement and he said, “we’re in the same corporate group [as Passage Press]. Ark has separate editorial and management from Passage. We wish those guys well, and we hope they feel benevolently disposed toward us.”

With the announcement of Ark Press came word that Larry Correia would be penning a new modern fantasy series in the vein of Monster Hunter International for the budding company. It appears that Thiel’s investment group, unable to procure Baen and the Monster Hunter series, decided to take the talent from Baen and directly compete as the Monster Hunter series is still under Baen’s contract.

Fandom Pulse learned that Correia pitched the new series to Baen Books and that Baen Books passed on the series. We reached out to Toni Weisskopf for comment on this and the purchase offer, but she has not responded as of this writing.

Thiel’s move didn’t stop with Baen talent D.J. Butler and Larry Correia, but he also brought Tony Daniel, one of Baen’s former top editors who had previously left for Regency as editor-in-chief of the new company, as well as Baen editor David Afsharirad.

It should be interesting to see how this plays out over time. Ark Press may or may not elect to cooperate with Castalia in the future, but even if they don’t, it’s not as if Baen, or Tor, or anyone else in our space ever has. Passage Press is competent, so I don’t see any reason to assume the Ark Press team won’t be as well. JDA says it’s game-changing, and given the feeble state of Tor Books and the rest of SF/F publishing, he may well be right.

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