Tag: Castalia House

Why aren’t YOU buying ebooks?

Ebooks sales have declined over the last two years. While Castalia has been growing 100 percent year-on-year for more than six straight months, we have seen our ebook sales decline in April, possibly because we haven’t released anything new in ebook – although John C. Wright’s City Beyond Time is now available in trade paperback.

Britons are abandoning the ebook at an alarming rate with sales of consumer titles down almost a fifth last year, as “screen fatigue” helped fuel a five-year high in printed book sales. Sales of consumer ebooks plunged 17% to £204m last year, the lowest level since 2011 – the year the ebook craze took off as Jeff Bezos’ market-dominating Amazon Kindle took the UK by storm.

It is the second year running that sales of consumer ebooks – the biggest segment of the £538m ebook market, which fell 3% last year – have slumped as commuters, holidaymakers and leisure readers shelve digital editions in favour of good old fashioned print novels.

“I wouldn’t say that the ebook dream is over but people are clearly making decisions on when they want to spend time with their screens,” says Stephen Lotinga, chief exeutive of the Publishers Association, which published its annual yearbook on Thursday.

“There is generally a sense that people are now getting screen tiredness, or fatigue, from so many devices being used, watched or looked at in their week. [Printed] books provide an opportunity to step away from that.”

Sales of consumer ebooks hit a high water mark of £275m in 2014, when they accounted for half of the overall ebook market. The decline in consumer ebooks has been led by a slump in sales of the most popular segment, fiction, which plummeted 16% to £165m last year.

Are we putting out too many books too fast? Are we not putting out enough new books? Is it hatred for Amazon? More than enough Kindle Unlimited? Or are people simply getting tired of reading books on screen? While we’ve seen growth on the print side, it’s not enough to support the theory that people are switching from ebook to print.

This is not a complaint, you understand. We are profoundly grateful for the staunch support we have enjoyed from Castalia House’s readers, and we are striving to improve our catalog as it grows. Not every book is going to be a great one, but I believe that our percentage of “yes, that book was worth reading and I’m glad I read it” is relatively high for the publishing industry.

Anyhow, if you haven’t delved into Selenoth yet, perhaps Didact Reach’s reaction to A Sea of Skulls will convince you to do so:

Having read through your superb new book, A Sea of Skulls, right at the tail end of last year, I found myself left with more than a few questions as to how the overall plot of the Arts of Dark and Light series tied together. And so I went back and re-read A Throne of Bones last week, which I had reviewed back when it was released, to fill in my remaining gaps in memory.

I was truly delighted to find that the first book was actually even better after reading its sequel, four years later. Having finished it off, I went through ASOS again in fairly record time as well, and am now fully convinced that what you have created will stand the test of time as one of the best high-fantasy series ever written. I stand by my opinion that you have surpassed George Rape Rape Martin and left him panting and wheezing in the dust.

Overwrought and excessive praise from a fanboy? Or well-merited approbation? There is really only one way to find out.

The gatekeepers strike back

It’s rather ironic, but even though it has never been easier to bypass the publishing gatekeepers, they are tightening their enforcement of diversity and SJW ideology in the areas they still control. Jon Del Arroz says that it’s time to burn the ships and go all-in on the new platforms:

I learned that there is an author who had a manuscript rejected because multiple agents said this person “culturally appropriated” and that the author “doesn’t have the authority” to talk about this project.

That’s right. The piece was good, it would have been fine, but the problem is it would have had to come from a non-white author.

The agents actively discriminated against an author because they are white. A white writer was told to censor what that person writes and that it’s not welcome in the industry because of solely whiteness.

A writer who shall remain nameless notes that some writers of his acquaintance are afraid to break free and are instead responding by preemptively self-censoring in response to these restricted standards:

Originally we were going to do a Viking Saga kinda thing as a serial in REDACTED but somewhere they decided not to do European white male stories. This publication is self-sabotaged by the publisher and editors from the outset. Looking for all those non-white readers that we keep being told are out there. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

This is precisely why Castalia House exists. And this is why, if you do not wish to see total convergence in SF/F of the sort now seen in the comics industry, it is vital to continue to support it, and to spread the word about it. The support our readers have provided us has been phenomenal, and has fueled three years of steady growth, but we’re not content to defensively provide a platform for our existing authors, we intend to take the offensive and start reclaiming some of the territory that has been lost to the SJWs.

Michael Martel explains to someone why he has to go back.

The gates have been cracked, but the citadels still remain standing and far too much of the city remains under their sway. A lot of work remains to do, and the recent Amazon affiliate changes stand as a warning that the gatekeepers have other ways of exerting their control. That’s why, over the next three months, you will gradually see most of our books moving off of Kindle Select and Kindle Unlimited, and see the links here increasingly redirected towards the Castalia House store.

Diversity and comic sales

Jon Del Arroz looks deeper into the decline of Marvel as it relates to the comic giant’s descent into diversity:

A comic book retailer in the San Francisco Bay Area voiced his frustration, saying Marvel went from 48 percent to 25 percent of his sales. His shop and livelihood are at risk because of Marvel’s continued dedication to their shallow faux-diversity. If this type of cheap virtue signaling doesn’t work in San Francisco, what audience do they think they’re selling to?

Hearing the poor sales figures from a retailer prompted me to look into Marvel’s writers. Over a period of two weeks, I dug through the Twitter accounts of every current Marvel writer listed on marvel.com‘s new releases page, to see where they stood on politics. What I found would have been shocking, if I hadn’t already seen the extreme left-wing preaching posing as superhero adventures from their products. Even with that, the sheer lockstep and groupthink that these social media profiles display is unthinkable.

Out of 30 writers, every single one made bitter posts attacking President Trump and conservatives. There were no dissenters. Not one had a difference of opinion, not one even saw the sense in refraining from posting about politics… As a business, one would think that a company the size of Marvel would keep their customers’ demographics in mind. But as we’ve seen above, a large portion of their customer base has been told they’re not wanted. Their problem: the new, diverse crowd they desire didn’t come into comic shops to purchase their books to replace those they shunned.

I ran a Twitter search again, this time to investigate Marvel’s religious leanings. Marvel has writers who profess to be atheist, Jewish, and they even have a Muslim writer. Most writers, eager to speak out on their left-wing politics, don’t talk about their religion at all.

I did find one oddity: out of the entire group, I did not find one writer that openly professed Christianity. On the contrary, many of the writers made comments mocking Christians or the Bible. It begs the question: does Marvel hold a latent religious intolerance toward Christians? Based on this research, it would appear so.

No wonder the response to the idea of Castalia House Comics has been so strong. Marvel has completely turned its backs on most of its audience. Increasingly, it appears that disruption is the natural consequence of diversity in the corporate world.

CITY BEYOND TIME now in paperback

Metachronopolis is the golden city beyond time. Ruled by the Masters of Time, who can travel freely throughout the multitudinous time lines of Man’s history, the city is a shining society of heroes and horrors. For the arrogant Masters, who steal famous men and women out of the past and bring them to the eternal city for their amusement, are not only beyond time, but beyond remorse and retribution too.

CITY BEYOND TIME: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis is John C. Wright’s mind-bending and astonishingly brilliant take on time travel. Utilizing a centuries-spanning perspective, Wright expertly weaves a larger tale out of a series of smaller ones. Part anthology and part novel, CITY BEYOND TIME is fascinating, melancholy, frightening, and a true masterpiece of story-telling by one of the most important and audacious authors in science fiction today.

John C. Wright is the Dragon Award-winning author of SOMEWHITHER, THE GOLDEN AGE and AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND. CITY BEYOND TIME: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis is 192 pages and retails for $12.99. From the reviews:

  1. This collection of stories is amazing, and, true to form, incredibly deep and convoluted, (although well thought out). The vagaries of time when time travel is a part of the equation, when cause and effect are disassociated from one another, when paradoxes are used and abused by the ruling class is positively mind-bending.
  2. There are a lot of time travel books out there, the best and enduring being ones that examine questions of why or how or who. John C Wright has done what I’ve never seen before and examined time travel by “ought”; only with questions far deeper than just “ought you kill baby Hitler?”
  3. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves time travel science fiction. It is better then most time travel books that are linear in style and movement. It is by no means predictable and keeps you reading for more.
  4. Time travel has been a staple of science fiction for decades, as has the usual paradoxes. But Wright has tried a new twist – the morality of time travel. What is right and wrong when you can go back in time, rerun the past, and create the future? And what horrors can you conceal? Wright tells these stories with an elegant phrasing rarely seen today. Highly recommended.
  5. He writes as if Ray Bradbury and G.K. Chesterton stepped into an oddly shimmering portal, fractured the timelines, and produced an amalgamation, bent on one thing and one thing only: to produce engaging and enlightening entertainment disguised as books.

Alt-Hero in action

As there has been a tremendous amount of interest expressed in supporting the launch of a Castalia Comics line, and because the Brainstorm almost unanimously decided it was a project that merited pursuing, I’ve done some preliminary work in developing storylines, creating characters, finding good artists, and sorting out what sort of formats we should utilize. This is a mostly new area for me – writing the text for three Archangels comics is the full extent of my previous experience – so there is a bit of a learning curve involved, but I’m leaning towards a combination of smaller digital products combined with larger softcover print books and the occasional hardcover book for the hard core supporters and comics aficionados.

We also have to deal with the fact that Kickstarter is not a serious option. I contacted them and was open about what we intend to do with Alt-Hero, but instead of simply telling us that there was no chance in Hell they would permit such an egregious offense to their SJW principles, they said that we should put the entire campaign together, launch it, and then at that point they would let us know if it was acceptable or not.

Right. Fortunately, there are other options, as needless to say, even this small glimpse of the world of Prophet, Captain Euro, Michael Martel, and the UN-sponsored Global Justice Initiative will suffice to trigger outrage in the average SJW. Assuming that support for the project continues to remain strong, I expect we’ll launch the Alt-Hero kickstarter in 2-3 months.

Reviewers/Proofreaders wanted

We’ve got a pair of Mil-SF novels coming out this month. One is good. The other may be the best novel we have published yet. If you would like to volunteer for proofreading or reviewing either, please email with MIL-SF in the subject. We would like 20-25 between the two.


We are good to go, thank you!

Also, well done, VFM. Exactly what was required. Mission accomplished.

Fictional is not a synonym for false

National Catholic Register interviews John C. Wright:

What do you think is the place of such elements in science fiction?

Hmm. Good question. Science fiction is by and large based on a naturalistic view of the universe. When penning adventures about space princesses being rescued from space pirates by space marines, religion does not come up, except as local background and local color, in which case, the role of religion is to provide the radioactive altar to the Snake God of Mars to which our shapely by half-clad space princess is chained, that our stalwart hero can fight the monster.

Now, any story of any form can be used as a parable or as an example of a religious truth: indeed, my latest six-book trilogy is actually about faith, although it is portrayed in figures as being about a man’s love for his bride.

Fantasy stories, on the other hand, once any element of magic or the supernatural is introduced either declare for the Church or declare for witchcraft, depending on whether or not occultism is glamorized.

Note that I speak of occultism, not magic itself. Merlin the magician is a figure from King Arthur tales, of which no more obviously Christian stories can be found, outside of Dante and Milton, but no portrayal in olden days of Merlin glamorized the occult. Again, the way characters like Gandalf in Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, Coriakin in C.S. Lewis’s Narnia, or Harry Potter, even those they are called wizards, are clearly portrayed either as commanding a divine power, or, in Potter’s case, controlling what is basically an alternate technology or psychic force. There is no bargaining with unclean spirits, no rituals, not even a pack of tarot cards. These are like the witches in Halloween decorations, who fly brooms and wave magic wands, and nothing like the real practices of real wiccans, neopagans or other fools who call themselves witches.

Fools, because, as I did when I challenged God, they meddle with forces of which they have no understanding. I meddled with bright forces, and was spared. They meddle with dark, and they think they can escape the price.

Fantasy stories generally are hostile to Christianity, some intentionally and some negligently. The negligent hostility springs from the commonplace American desire for syncretism, that is, for all religions to be equal. Even some fairly Christian-themed fantasy stories yield weakmindedly to this temptation, as in Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising or A Wrinkle in Time is a science fantasy novel by American writer Madeleine L’Engle, where the forces of light are portrayed as ones where Christ is merely one teacher among many, each equally as bright and good, but makes no special nor exclusive claim. Or tales where the crucifix will drive back a vampire, but so will any other sign or symbol of any religion, from Asatru to Zoroastrianism, because all religions are equal, dontchaknow.

Such syncretic fantasy stories are perhaps more dangerous that those which are openly hostile to religion in general and Catholicism in particular, because such stories as are openly hostile can be read with pleasure and enjoyment the way one would read the Iliad by Homer or the Aeneid of Virgil, as pagan works where the reader suffers no temptation to bow to the stupid gods the writer evidently favors. In this category I place the work of Philip Pullman and Michael Moorcock. Socialist anarchist materialists are so autistic when it comes to spiritual matters, their worlds portrayed in their make believe has little or no power to sway real faith in anything real. Their ideas, when they venture into spiritual themes, are like listening to colorblind men discussing how they would make a better rainbow.

More dangerous are writers of real skill and talent whose spiritual vision is awake, but whose loyalty is in the enemy camp: I put the remarkably talented Ursula K LeGuin in this category, for she can capture the spiritual look, feel, and flavor of Taoism without ever once revealing her own spiritual preferences; and likewise Mr. John Crowley, who is a gnostic, and peppers his work with themes that make the heresy seem quite inviting and new.

In my fantasy stories, magic is always portrayed as unlawful for humans, dangerous, and innately corruptive; elves are beautiful but dangerous; the Church is a mighty fortress bold as an army with spears and trumpets. Because that is the way it really is.

Stories and fairy tales are fictional. That does not mean they are false.

March Brainstorm

It’s tomorrow night, 7 PM Eastern. We’ve got everything from Infogalactic news to a combat expert discussing the best way to deal with Black Bloc and other risks in an urban or suburban environment. Invites will be sent out tonight.

Also, we have an increasing number of ladies supporting Castalia House these days, which may be why we’ve had more than a few requests for a pink Castalia House v-neck. It’s available now, although the pink is not quite as hot as the picture tends to indicate.

Science fiction: genre or tag?

An excellent post on the creation of “science fiction” and it’s impact on Jeffro’s “pulp revolution” at Castalia House

This is where we start to really see science fiction emerge as a term for a distinct genre, not so much because of clear differences between these stories and the other material being produced at the time (planetary romances, weird tales, science and sorcery, space opera with the Flash Gordon vibe) but as a marketing category: it was now clear that there really was a market for stories that did what Gernsback (and Wilson) wanted, and the industry – newly expanding into the fresh sales categories of inexpensive pocket-sized paperbacks – was eager to supply.
You can even see the effect if you want: Google’s ngram viewer[6] shows the curve for the frequency of the use of “science fiction” in their database of digitized texts:
None of the common terms for genre are particularly common until science fiction starts to take off in the early 1940s – it sees healthy growth right up until 1960, and then – WHAM – it explodes![7] Is it a coincidence that this explosion of awareness of “science fiction” as a category coincides with the era in which publishing was consolidating, bookstore franchises were growing, and the value of systematizing the way books were marketed was understood, the approach applied?　It’s certainly not a coincidence that it coincides with Donald Wollheim’s masterful application of new printing options to both revitalize old, beloved classics and discover a bevy of amazing new authors while editor for Avon and Ace, and later with his own imprint at DAW.

The bloggers at Castalia House have really picked up their game in an impressive fashion. In my opinion, they have made a very credible run at Black Gate for the title of Best SF/F Site on a daily basis, so credible that I think it would be virtually impossible to say which is the more can’t-miss site from one day to the next.

I’ll freely admit that last year, there were occasionally times that days would go by before I would visit Castalia House. But ever since Jeffro brought on the new bloggers and committed to ensuring multiple daily posts, I don’t think I’ve missed a day of reading it. And the discussions are every bit as lively as the discourse here, if considerably more esoteric.

Great job, gentlemen.

ROCKY MOUNTAIN RETRIBUTION

In the post-Civil War West, the railroads are expanding, the big money men are moving in, and the politicians they are buying make it difficult for a man to stand alone on his own. So, Walt Ames moves his wife, his home and his business from Denver to Pueblo. The railroads are bringing new opportunities to Colorado Territory, and he’s going to take full advantage of them.


Ambushed on their way south, Walt and his men uncover a web of corruption and crime to rival anything in the big city. And rough justice, Western-style, sparks a private war between Walt and some of the most dangerous killers he’s ever encountered, a deadly war in which neither friends nor family are spared.


Across the mountains and valleys of the southern Rocky Mountains, Walt and his men hunt for the ruthless man at the center of the web. Retribution won’t be long delayed… and it cannot be denied.

ROCKY MOUNTAIN RETRIBUTION is the second book in The Ames Archives, the classic Western series that began with BRINGS THE LIGHTNING. Author Peter Grant is a military veteran, a retired pastor, and the author of The Maxwell Saga and The Laredo Trilogy.

DRM-free. Also available in EPUB format from the Castalia House bookstore. From the reviews:

  • the story feels startlingly real. It’s crystal clear that the author knows what he is speaking of when he describes the joy of love, the pain of loss, and the sting of battle.
  • If you like Louis L’Amour or Zane Grey, you’ll enjoy these. Grant is one of the best story tellers I know, and I’ve enjoyed his westerns more than anything else he’s written. I definitely recommend Rocky Mountain Retribution to anyone who enjoys adventure, honor, and grit.
  • Peter Grant’s research is impeccable. His study of the weaponry, business, demographics, and customs of the Old West offer surprisingly insights and keeps his work from being just another paint-by-number spaghetti Western. I was especially impressed by the business analysis, showing how Walt makes his decisions to go and do what he does.