Tag: Castalia House

Call for translators

Castalia House has two very important books coming out early next year. One is the 4GW Handbook by William S. Lind and LtCol Gregory A. Thiele. The other is by an intellectual heavy-hitter who cannot yet be named since some of the details are still being worked out concerning the project. Castalia is paying its usual revenue share on both books, 25 percent, although keep in mind that some languages such as Baha Indonesia have sold very, very few copies as Amazon doesn’t even sell books in that language.

We absolutely require native speakers, (mere fluency is not enough) and prefer those with previous writing or translating experience. Previous Castalia translators will be given precedence, as we already know the quality of their work. Some, though not all, of these translations may appear in hardcover as well as in ebook format. Neither book is particularly long, the 4GW Handbook is around 50k words and the other one is 100k words.

If you are interested and able to commit to doing either or both of these translations, please send me an email with your native language in all caps in the subject.

Another nomination for Larry

The Hugo-nominated author Larry Correia is now up for another award, this one being the Horror category of the GoodReads Choice Awards. The book nominated is Monster Hunter Nemesis and you can vote for it here.

And to think he didn’t even campaign for it! How is that even possible?

In other book news, there were two interesting development on the Castalia front this week. First, we’ve been under a relentless hacker attack for the last 134 hours, which appears to be related to our public endorsement of #GamerGate. After some initial success tracking down our login URL due to our carelessness, we tightened up the security and have been letting the hacker fruitlessly bang his head against the locked door in an attempt to gather more information about him. He’s changed his tactics three times now, but we have traced his activity through several servers in the USA and we may even have found his genuine IP address. So, the hunter has become the hunted.

The second thing was that as a result of working with a new author who will be announced shortly, his agent brought a second author to our attention, whose work actually promises to be very interesting. So, that’s another small step forward for the Blue SF/F revolution.

Sci Phi Journal #2

Quite a few New Release subscribers opted for SCI PHI JOURNAL #1 as their free book, so I expect more than few people might be pleased to know that the publisher is permitting Castalia House customers to purchase SCI PHI JOURNAL #2 a few days prior to its official release on November 1st.  The second issue of SCI PHI JOURNAL features short stories, book reviews, and some interesting articles such as “On the Ethics of Supersoldiers” by Patrick S. Baker and “The Making of the Fellowship” by the excellent fantasy essayist Tom Simon. it also contains the first part of a serial, Beyond the Mist by Ben Zwycky, and a history that never-was by Castalia House standout John C. Wright, entitled “Prophetic & Apotropaic Science Fiction”.

From the reviews of the premier issue:

  • It’s a bit tragic that you’d need a somewhat
    specialized magazine to read stuff that treats Sci Fi, philosophy and
    Christianity seriously and with respect – but here it is. 
  • This was an enjoyable read, well worth the price. As with anything in
    this format, the individual entries are of varying quality, but none
    were all bad. “Domo” was my personal favorite.
  • Enjoyed it enormously. The stories are well written. The magazine is thought provoking. 

SCI PHI JOURNAL #2 is now available in the Castalia Store for $3.99. 

Air strikes still don’t work

The failure of the American air campaign against 4GW forces will not be news to anyone who has read William S. Lind’s ON WAR:

The Islamic State continues to gain new recruits in large numbers despite weeks of airstrikes and other military efforts by the United States, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.

Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said the group’s ability to attract new recruits to replenish their fighting ranks is an indication of the its mass appeal. U.S. strikes have thus far not degraded IS’s ability to grow its forces, Kirby said.

It would have been more than a little remarkable if they had. Some relevant quotes from the newly released book; note that the most recent one was written more than six years ago.

  • Air power works against you, not for you. It kills lots of people who weren’t your enemy, recruiting their relatives, friends and fellow tribesmen to become your enemies. In this kind of war, bombers are as useful as 420mm siege mortars.  – “Incapable of Learning”
  • The Israeli high command continues to express its faith in the foxfire of air power to destroy Hezbollah, but, as always, it’s not working. Lebanon is taking a pounding, to be sure, but Lebanon is not Hezbollah. – “Welcome to My Parlour”
  •  Air power failed, as it always does against an enemy who doesn’t have to maneuver operationally, or even move tactically for the most part. – “Beat!”
  • The U.S. Air Force recently announced it is developing its own counter-insurgency doctrine, precisely because some people are suggesting air strikes are counterproductive in such conflicts. Well, yes, that is what anyone with any understanding of counter-insurgency would suggest. The Air Force, of course, cares not a whit about the realities of counter-insurgency. – “The Perfect (Sine) Wave”
  • Air power always promises more than it can deliver. – “Operation Cassandra”

#1 Military Strategy bestseller

This is really remarkable when one considers that as many books were sold at the Castalia House store as were sold on Amazon yesterday. On behalf of both Castalia and Mr. Lind, I would like to thank you for your support of what, despite being a must-read, is but a mere prelude to an even more important book that will be published in 2015.

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,111 Paid in Kindle Store

  • #1 in Books > History > Military > Strategy
  • #1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > History > Military > Strategy
  • #12 in Books > History > Military

A few people need to be thanked for their assistance in the successful launch of On War: The Collected Columns of William S. Lind 2003-2009. First, LtCol Gregory A. Thiele, USMC, who helped me find some of the missing columns. Despite the book’s mammoth size, we’re still missing about five percent of the 325 that were originally written; as we discover them, we will add them to the ebook. Second, LL, who did the first draft of the e-formatting of the first draft, which I can assure you is the only reason the book made it out in 2014. She’s a fast learner and an even faster formatter. Third, Martin van Creveld, the brilliant and influential Israeli military strategist, author of two books in the 4GW canon, who graciously agreed to write the Foreword. We’re hoping to add him to the Castalia House ranks someday.

Fourth is Tesla7, who bought the book as soon as it was available, ripped through it, and sent me an errata list that allowed me to considerably clean up the text before it went up on Amazon. If you’ve ever converted PDF to text, then you’ll understand that despite whatever errata it still contains, the ebook is much cleaner than one would reasonably expect considering its size. Fifth is dh, whose idea for a New Release newsletter turned out to be more effective than I’d ever expected. We’ve now got an active subscriber list that is more than 7x bigger than I anticipated; if you want to join it, just leave a comment at the Castalia blog and check the box at the bottom marked “Add me to the New Release mailing list”. And sixth is JartStar and Ørjan, who joined forces to produce another excellent, eye-catching cover.

So, thanks again for your support of Mr. Lind and Castalia, and regardless of where you bought the book, please consider taking the time to post a review on Amazon. Newsletter subscribers, the download codes for your free books will be sent out later today. I’m rather curious to see how the breakdown of the five books turns out, as more people were interested in Sci Phi Journal #1 than I’d expected.

The vanishing borders

Post-WWI borders are dissolving, and not in the way that the globalists were anticipating:

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon gave a wide-ranging and
provocative interview to NPR earlier this week. Of particular interest
was his recognition that the national borders that were created after
World War I are dissolving:


The borders of many Arab states were drawn up by Westerners a century ago, and wars in recent years show that a number of them are doomed to break apart, according to Ya’alon, a career soldier who became Israel’s defense minister last year. “We have to distinguish between countries like Egypt, with their history. Egypt will stay Egypt,” Ya’alon, who is on a visit to Washington, tells Morning Edition’s Steve Inskeep.
In contrast, Ya’alon says, “Libya was a new creation, a Western creation as a result of World War I. Syria, Iraq, the same — artificial nation-states — and what we see now is a collapse of this Western idea.” Asked if Middle Eastern borders are likely to change in the coming years, Ya’alon says: “Yes, absolutely. It has been changed already. Can you unify Syria? [President] Bashar al-Assad is controlling only 25 percent of the Syrian territory. We have to deal with it.”

Ya’alon is right. As our own Adam Garfinkle concluded in June about
Iraq: “The Iraqi state in its historic territorial configuration is
gone—solid gone, and it ain’t coming back.” The region’s other
“artificial nation-states” aren’t going to return to the status quo ante
bellum either. Whatever comes out of the current war, it won’t look
like the old landscape, and we shouldn’t imagine that there are natural
nations waiting to be created out of the ethno-tribal-religious anarchy
that the Middle East is witnessing.

However, it isn’t merely in the Middle East that the dissolving borders issue can be observed, as anyone who lives in the southwestern United States will know. As William Lind, author of the Castalia House book ON WAR (which will be officially released tomorrow) pointed out in “The Canon and the Four Generations”:

4th Generation war is the greatest change since the Peace of Westphalia, because it marks the end of the state’s monopoly on war. Once again, as before 1648, many different entities, not states, are fighting war. They use many different means, including terrorism and immigration, not just formal armies. Differences between cultures, not just states, become paramount,and other cultures will not fight the way we fight. All over the world, state militaries are fighting non-state opponents, and almost always, the state is losing. State militaries were designed to fight other state militaries like themselves, and against nonstate enemies most of their equipment, tactics and training are useless or counterproductive.

The effects of 4GW can already be seen in the Middle East. But the same forces are actively at work right here in the United States, and, to a lesser extent, in Europe as well.

Debating Amazon

Joe Konrath hands Rob Spillman his head in a debate over Amazon:

“What I can’t understand is why you would cheer for Amazon in its fight against traditional publishers. Here comes one of my analogies that you love to pull apart – -it seems like rooting for the lions against the Roman prisoners in the Coliseum.”

I was a Roman prisoner in the Coliseum, being feasted on by lions. Those lions were big publishers. After 20 years, a million written words, and nine rejected novels, I finally landed a book contract. And I worked my ass off and published eight novels with legacy publishers, dozens of short stories with respected magazines, and went above and beyond everything that was required of me, in order to succeed.

And I got eaten. One-sided contracts, broken promises, lousy money. But it was the only game in town. If I wanted to make a living as a writer, I had no choice.

Then Amazon invented the Kindle.

I first self-pubbed in May of 2009. That first month I made $1,500, publishing books that New York rejected. Those same rejected books have earned me hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I cheer for Amazon because it saved me, and thousands of other authors, from the Coliseum. And I try to show others there is a way to make money from publishing where the terms are better, and the writer stays in control.

“My central argument is that if Amazon crushes us all, it will be able to dictate whatever terms to anyone using its massive platform. What if it suddenly decides to flip terms and only offer you 30 percent, or decide that your books really should be sold for 50 cents?”

Rob, that’s what the Big 5 already do. Except for an elite, tiny group of upper-tier authors, the Big 5 treat 99.9 percent of us badly. Keeping rights for term of copyright? Non-compete clauses? Twenty-five percent e-book royalty on net? I’ve had chapters cut by editors that I wanted to keep. I’ve had terrible cover art. I’ve had my titles forcibly changed. And my experience isn’t unique. I’m friends with hundreds of authors. A few were treated like kings. Most were screwed.

You worry that Amazon might someday offer 30 percent when publishers right now offer 17.5 percent? You must see how odd that is.

I was treated very well by Pocket Books. I have no complaints on that score. But my personal experience, which was mostly positive, doesn’t change the fact that mainstream publishing is extremely exploitative of authors; the feed-em-in-and-spit-em-out system is constantly churning and destroys the careers of the vast majority of authors who enter it.

And speaking of independent publishing, I’m pleased to say that we should be able to announce as many as FOUR new Castalia authors in the near future.

ON WAR and the CH newsletter

We are on the verge of releasing ON WAR: The collected columns of William S. Lind 2003-2009. It is a 915-page monster that is not to be missed by anyone with an interest in military history, military theory, or current events. Featuring a Foreword by noted Israeli strategist Martin van Creveld, this insightful collection of columns reads very much like today’s news, only written ten years ago.

As Lind himself notes, the value of any theory is in its ability to correctly anticipate events. By this measure, Lind’s 4th Generation War theory is very valuable indeed. ON WAR will first be available in two ebook formats for three days, beginning Friday, on the Castalia House store, to newsletter subscribers, at a price of $6.99. It will be available on Amazon on Monday, October 26th. Subscribers who purchase the book from Castalia in the first three days will also receive their choice of a free book from five options that will be specified in the newsletter. To subscribe to the newsletter, simply leave a comment on the Castalia House blog and check the box that says “Add me to Castalia’s New Book Release mailing list”.

Castalia audiobooks

I was very disappointed with my experience selling audiobooks through Audible. Not only did they control the prices and set them too high for a one hour forty-five minute audiobook, but whatever compression algorithm they used on the files caused the audio quality to seriously deteriorate. That was particularly annoying because I could hear what it was supposed to sound like on the original.

In any event, since we recovered the rights from Marcher Lord and we didn’t use ACX to produce the audio recordings, we are now able to make the audiobook for A MAGIC BROKEN available from the Castalia House store. We are also introducing a new policy, as the ebook is included with a purchase of the audiobook. We’ve also reduced the price and have improved the audio quality of the retail MP3 by using a variable bit rate to compress the file.

We are very interested in producing more ebooks, especially now that we’ve got more books from more authors to consider. And while we are quite happy with Nick Afka Thomas as the Official Voice of Selenoth, we are on the lookout for narrators to read stand-alone books such as AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND, CITY BEYOND TIME, as well as the QUANTUM MORTIS and THE STARS CAME BACK science fiction series. If you’re interested, please send us a three-minute sample MP3 of you reading a passage from the relevant book with NARRATOR in the subject.