Tag: mailvox

Mailvox: update requested

CA writes to inquire about QM, progress on Book Two, and other matters:

Just wondering how your writing projects have been going. A few weeks back you mentioned that you would talk about Quantum Mortis that you are co-writing with Steve Rzasa (I know about the co-authoring part cause I found the mention of QM on Rzasa’s site before it showed up on yours.) You haven’t yet mentioned anything. When are you going to spill the beans? 😉

Also wondering how Book 2 of Arts of Dark and Light is coming? How close are you to having a first draft of the book? What’s the page count so far? Any tasty morsels that you can drop for us readers? Looking forward to your writing,

I have to apologize for the light posting last week. I was rather busy with my day job, which involved a technology conference that was truly excellent. I had the distinct privilege of meeting the founder of the Pirate Party, and you can expect to see an interview with him posted here in the reasonably near future. I’m also going to see if I can arrange to do a Lions Den of his tactical manual, Swarmwise.

I also had the chance to see my better-looking intellectual twin again, which is always a delight. While everyone else was discussing who Yahoo was overpaying for next and the wisdom of staying out of the way of Google in the consumer space, we were talking about the implications of Janet Yellen at the Fed, various gold conspiracy theories, and the possibility of the pseudo-shutdown turning into a real one. Great fun and I learned a lot from a number of different people. It was easily the best conference I’ve been to since the 1996 CGDC in Santa Clara.

As to Quantum Mortis, it is the result of the realization that TAODAL will prevent me from getting around to any of my other ideas for at least five years. QM is based upon a novella I started about 12 years ago and somehow managed to lose in the transition from one computer to another. When it turned up again, I read it and really liked the idea, but I knew I couldn’t justify taking the time to turn it into a proper novel.

So, I contacted Steve, handed it over to him, and he turned the beginning into a complete novel. I took 30 days off of Book Two to rewrite certain parts and add some new sections, and finished it last week. Two of the regulars who shall remain nameless for the present have read the draft, and I will take the liberty of quoting one of them concerning it:


“I loved every second of this. I sincerely did. I think it’s more
enjoyable than A Throne of Bones… and I think it has broader market appeal. Seriously. Standing fucking ovation.”

That’s all I will say about it for the present, other than to say that the release date of the ebook will be safely before Christmas, with the hardcover to follow.  As before, those who preorder the hardcover will receive the ebook free. With regards to Book Two of TAODAL, I’m not quite as far along as I would like to be, but I do not expect any trouble sticking to my 24-month release schedule.  Also, ACX has released the audiobook of A Magic Broken to Audible, iTunes, and the other retailers, so I expect to be able to post a sample and make an announcement about that being available very soon.

And no one need worry that I am pulling a Martin. In addition to being considerably younger and healthier, I have no intention of allowing myself to be unduly distracted by other writing projects.  It was refreshing to take a brief break from the war and politics of Selenoth, but I’m quite happy to rejoin Marcus Valerius, newly christened “Cavarus” by the men of his legion, and the other surviving characters again.

Mailvox: econo-ignorati

I’m not sure which is more impressive, the ability of those who don’t wish to see the obvious to not see it, or the stubborn determination of the inept anklebiter to think that this time, for sure, he’s going to be able to prove me wrong.

Irish Farmer doesn’t appear to understand what is meant by either “wages” or “consumption”:

If women were consumers before they entered the workforce, then who’s money were they consuming with? Mens? Parents’? In that case, those wages were already practically depressed by the fact that men and/or parents were providing women with a sort of salary. 

No. Wages are not reduced by consumption. Wages are reduced by increased supply of labor or decreased demand for labor.  Because consumption tends to increase demand for labor, it tends to increase wages. He digs himself deeper by failing to understand that a consumer is a consumer regardless of whether the consumer is in the labor force or not:

I think it’s simplistic to say, “Women were still consumers.” I’ll admit I don’t have the answers to these questions, but they still come to mind: Isn’t it possible that women workers created new markets, created increase consumption in some way? Can you really just say, “It was the exact same level of consumption now as it was in the ’50s”?

It is not only not simplistic to point out that women were, and continued to be, consumers before, during, and after they entered the labor force, it is absolutely idiotic to attempt to claim otherwise. None of this is equivalent, in any way, to saying anything about “the exact same level of consumption as in the 1950s”.  In fact, a moment’s thought will make it apparent that an increased number of women entering the work force will tend to reduce consumption in the short term; perhaps the women here can help us out.  Do you do tend to do most of your shopping when you are at work or when you are not at work?

Moreover, the reduced number of children produced by working women has unquestionably meant less consumption and less demand for labor in the long term as well. The mitigating effect on the labor supply of fewer children will not suffice to counterbalance this, since children are consumers for 18+ years before they enter the labor force.

And Phony not only reveals that he doesn’t know anything about economics, but he’s a relative newbie here. He’s clearly unaware of the fact that I addressed his objection back in 2006 as well as again earlier this year.

You’re making the implicit assumption, Dipshit, that they don’t produce anything for the wages they get. If they *are* producing more value than they get paid for, as seems reasonable in a capitalist society, then the wages paid will go up but be spent purchasing even more goods.

By your “logic”, Dipshit, the best America could do would be to have one person working to produce goods for 300 million consumers – after all, if anyone else enters the workforce, it will lower wages…

You talk about the post-1950 rise in female employment. So tell us, Dipshit, how come real wages continued to rise (in line with productivity) between 1950 and 1975 or so?

First, I am quite obviously not making the implicit assumption that women don’t produce anything for the wages they receive.  Second, if we apply his own logic, then the fact that real wages have not gone up since 1973 forces us to conclude that women are not producing more value than they are paid for. Third, my logic doesn’t suggest anything of the sort.

And fourth, in answer to his question, I quote myself from seven years ago:

“In the perfect world of economic modeling, it would make no difference
if men or women were working. And in fact, the deleterious effects on
wages of women entering the work force was largely hidden until 1973,
when men finally stopped leaving the work force in numbers sufficient to
conceal what was happening. In fact, one could characterize the period
from 1950 to 1973 as women working so that men over 60 could play golf.
The BLS numbers make this clear.”

Mailvox: what could possibly go wrong?

GV writes to observe that the USA is about to experiment with an economic application of Hultgreen-Curie Syndrome:

I was listing to the radio when I heard the news that Janet Yellen would be named the next fed chair.  I went online to confirm this story and found this news story by NBC News.

It appears you were right about what you wrote in your blog post on 9/16/2013 entitled The job no one wants.  You wrote that you assumed it would be Janet Yellen.  It’s funny how the link to the NBC news story talks about her being the first women to head the central bank and some of her accomplishment but it leaves out the quote you put at the end of that blog post were she said the following;

 “For my own part I did not see and did not appreciate what the risks were with securitization, the credit ratings agencies, the shadow banking system, the S.I.V.’s — I didn’t see any of that coming until it happened.”
– Janet Yellen, 2010

With someone like that in charge what could possibly go wrong.

Christine Lagarde at the IMF and Janet Yellen at the Fed. This should be an interesting test of whether putting women in charge will make it all better. I wouldn’t mind being wrong, for all of our sakes, but I’m not terribly sanguine about the probabilities here.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard summarizes: “So there we have it. The next chairman of the Fed is going to track the labour participation rate. Money will stay loose.”

Mailvox: alternative credentials

ML’s experiences in computer programming have been similar to mine.

 Your posts regarding the college gender gap have been
fascinating.  I graduated in 2001 with a degree in computer science.  At
the time, our program had about ten women.  As it happens, two of them
happened to end up in a few of my upper division classes.  They were
both mediocre programmers at best.  From what I gathered they graduated
by hanging out in the lab and “collaborating” with the beta, gamma, and
omega males working on their own projects.

I went on to work at IBM for twelve years as a
software engineer.  By that time IBM had long been infected with the
diversity cancer and women in technology were vital to IBM’s success in
the global economy.  There were hundreds of women in my division and
while most of them were on the technical career track they worked mostly
as project managers or testers.  The women that started out in actual
software development positions did not last long.  They were frequently
promoted to management or moved to project management or test positions.

There were two notable exceptions.  In the mid to
late 80’s IBM experienced a shortage of software developers.  The
universities, typically lagging, had not yet created the programs to
educate programmers in sufficient numbers.  IBM decided it would offer
it’s semi-skilled workforce the opportunity to attend an in house
programming school.  Those that graduated were guaranteed promotions
from manufacturing and secretarial jobs to professional careers.  Since
IBM had a very large pool of candidates, it didn’t care about the
graduation rate.  The goal was to create functional programmers.  In
talking to the old timers I gather the program was very challenging.
 The only two competent female coders I came into contact with during my
time at IBM graduated from that program.  Both of these women were
exceptionally good, better than 90% of their male peers.  Even though
the program allowed women, graduating them was not mandatory.  In fact
women were not expected to graduate so those that did actually achieved
something meaningful.

You discuss alternative credentialing systems much
like IBMs old boot camp coming into existence.  How do you foresee these
systems withstanding the “need for diversity”.  Certainly no such
system would be successful at today’s diverse multicultural IBM.

There was one good female programmer at the small tech company of about 100 people where I worked for two years before starting my first game company. She was quite attractive too. But the other one spent years, literally years, finding creative ways to avoid doing anything at all. It was rather impressive in retrospect; I’m not even sure she knew how to program.

Diversity is a luxury item. The new credential systems spring up because there is a need for them, the old ones having been ruined by diversity, equality, and so forth. Whenever and wherever there is more need for actual performance than the pretense of it, people will find away to utilize them.

Mailvox: the falsifiability of moral parasitism

R meets with a preemptive objection to TIA:

A young friend of ours has, after my recommending he read “The Irrational Atheist”, said this:

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t Day insist atheists are moral parasites? He says that atheists inherit their morality from a foundation already established by Christianity. The problem with this stance is that it is unfalsifyable. It suggests that a society lacking Christian influence would be incapable of developing a similar morality. Well we live in a world which has had religious influence (mostly Abrahamic faiths) permeated throughout it, so where can we test the notion? We cannot. The argument cannot be tested. It therefore holds little weight.

I will read this book, i promise you that as a friend, and we may or may not have a discussion about it. My concern with approaching the work is that it will be littered with similar logic. But like I said I will read it. We’ll see if my concerns are founded.”

It’s always so cute when young atheists attempt to construct logical arguments on the basis of foundations they don’t understand with reason they utilize improperly. There are numerous problems with this attempt to preemptively rebut my arguments without even reading them; I continue to find it astonishing how many atheists observably believe that it is possible to provide substantive criticism in complete and self-admitted ignorance.

First, my argument concerning moral parasitism is that atheists tend to inherit or absorb their moralities from the dominant society in which they dwell rather than reasoning them out from first principles or developing them from science as many of them claim to have done.  That is why it is meaningful to identify someone as a Catholic atheist, a Jewish atheist, or a Muslim atheist; their moral standards tend to be Catholic morality less whatever the atheist doesn’t like, Jewish morality less whatever the atheist doesn’t like, etc.

It is true that in the West, which was once known as Christendom, most atheists are Christian moral parasites. But this is considerably less true in other parts of the world, despite Christianity’s current global reach.

Second, the young atheist’s objection underlines my point about the remarkable atheist ignorance of history.  Where can we test the notion? My suggestion would be to look at pre-Christian societies and compare the differences between the moralities advocated by the atheists in those societies and those to which modern Christian atheists subscribe.  Is he truly unaware that we are privy to a considerable amount of ideas from philosophers untouched by the Abrahamic faiths? Alternatively, we could look at the moralities espoused by atheists raised in current religious traditions such as Islam, Judaism, the Chinese pagan folk religion, Buddhism, and the myriad of less popular religions.

We know, from history, that societies lacking Christian influence do not develop Christian morality.  In fact, we can go much farther, as we know that societies lacking Christian influence did not develop modern science.  It would be going too far to definitely claim that Christianity is a prerequisite for the development of scientody, but it cannot be denied that none of the hundreds of non-Christian societiesever independently developed the scientific method.

It is theoretically possible to claim my observation is incorrect, but it is not even remotely credible to claim that it is unfalsifiable. The fact that it has not been tested does not mean that it cannot be tested. As it happens, the hypothesis can be tested on an experimental basis with proper control groups; one wonders if the young atheist is consistent and rejects both evolution by natural selection and string theory on the same basis he has ventured here.  Based on the level of logic-mastery he has demonstrated here, I would tend to doubt it.

Mailvox: the dead horse quivers

SV digs up, from the past, a certain blast:

I read your Sept 6, 2004 review of Michele Malkin’s book supporting internment and I was wondering if you remember or noted where you found the information for this paragraph:

“In January 1942, prior to both Executive Order 9066 and the battle of Midway, the Imperial Japanese Navy possessed 717 carrier-borne planes and 176 ships, of which 15 were troop transports. The IJN’s troop-bearing capacity was about 42,000 men. Reinforcement and resupply required a roundtrip transit of 11,000 miles to a coastline only 1,359 miles long.”

Less important are the facts here, but just in case you have it:

“The Overlord invasion required 4,600 ships to travel 100 miles under the air cover of 12,000 planes to land 156,000 troops on a French coastline 3,437 miles long. Over the next three weeks, the Allies brought in another 850,000 men, 148,000 vehicles, and 570,000 tons of supplies.”

If I recall correctly, I worked out the IJN numbers from Tony Tully’s excellent The Imperial Japanese Navy Page.  I don’t remember where I looked up the statistics related to the invasion of Normandy, but they’re readily available.

It is a little amusing to look back and recall that some people actually took Me So Michelle’s book seriously at the time. It’s largely forgotten now, but it didn’t escaped my attention how she quickly stopped talking about it in public after I exposed her complete lack of research in support of her attempt to manufacture a retroactive military justification for the historical internment of Japanese-Americans.

One thing I didn’t mention in that article was that the former Marine Commandant’s first reaction, when asked about the viability of a Japanese invasion of the U.S. West Coast, was an instinctive snort of disdain. I mean, the hypothetical invasion is the sort of thing you have to be a complete military ignoramus to even contemplate for a millesecond. Forget Anzio. An IJN invasion of California would have made the Bay of Pigs invasion look sane and conservative by comparison.

Mailvox: a secular religion

MP emails an account of a woman quitting Teach for America and notices its similarities to a religion… or a cult:

This is a fascinating account of the religion that is Teach for America and the women that inhabit it.  This passage was particularly interesting because it shows the religious nature of the TFA girls:

“I am shifting my weight uncomfortably in a plastic classroom chair on an Atlanta summer afternoon. Our adviser interrupts lunch by asking us to pause to spend a few minutes reflecting on what brought us to TFA in the first place. After the requisite reflection time, and after turning off the room’s lights, Alicia begins to share a story about growing up with a single mother, culminating in an emotional appeal to do whatever we can to help “our kids” in the future. Although I have always found Alicia to be rather stoic, she suddenly begins sobbing when relaying this story. After regaining composure, she makes it clear that we are meant to follow suit. One by one, until the 12th person has spoken, we deliver either tearful accounts of personal hardship or awkward, halting stories recounted by people uncomfortable with the level of intimacy. While talking to other TFA teachers from different schools over dinner, I learn that other groups had nearly identical sessions.”

This is the classic “testifying” step in poor fundamentalist Christian church services  in which the various converted sinners are invited to testify about their sinful past and how low they were before they “came to Jesus”.  They recount all the bad things in their past and how it all changed when they “came to Jesus”.  Each person who is testifying get kudos and respect for how deeply they had fallen and therefore how much farther Jesus raised them from sin and degradation before they were redeemed. Lots of weeping and wailing, and “Praise Jesus!”, particularly by the women in the congregations.

It reminded me of accounts I’ve read of both Womyn’s Studies classes and Maoist reedcuation sessions. You really have to read the whole thing. It is like music to the ears of those of us who anticipate the collapse of the public school system; one would feel bad for the young women being so perfectly set up to fail if they weren’t such a poisonously destructive collection of mindlessly self-perpetuating leftbots.

Mailvox: you are not excused

Mr. Rational complained about his disappearing comments:

“Censoring again?  Shame on you.”

To which I replied:

“I’m not
censoring anything, you moron. If you hadn’t tried to comment
anonymously here at some point, your comments wouldn’t get spam-trapped
from time to time. As was the case here. Learn to ask questions before making an ass of yourself with false assumptions.”

Prompting this response:

“Well, excuse me for thinking that when a comment

(a) is posted without any links or other spammish content,
(b) appears on the post page as I reload it, and then
(c) disappears some time later while subsequent comments appear down-thread,

“it is through the intervention of someone after the fact. Because that is exactly what I have observed on multiple occasions, and absent any other information it is the logical conclusion.”

The point isn’t whether Mr. Rational had some justification for suspecting I was censoring his comments or not, but rather, instead of asking, he immediately leaped to a false conclusion and made an accusation on that basis. As it happens, the comment behavior he observed is EXACTLY what happens when Blogger spam-traps a comment.

Which is in fact, happened to his comments, which I subsequently found in the spam-trap and despammed. I didn’t delete his comments the first time, when he repeatedly posted the same comment about Fukushima again and again and again.  And I didn’t delete his comments this time either.

One can be excused for harboring suspicions. But if you’ve got suspicions of your comments being deleted for one reason or another, just ask me. If I decide delete your comment for one reason or another, I’m entirely willing to tell you why I did so.

As a general rule, before one starts running around and wagging one’s finger at people and crying “shame on you”, it is wise to first confirm that they have, in fact, engaged in the behavior one finds shameful.

Mailvox: a run-in with McRapey

Agathis’s initial experience with John Scalzi’s self-vaunted debate skills was quite similar to my own back in 2005:

Way back when, I had a blog and posted about Scalzi. He had made some
ridiculous argument about those that were all “het up” about
homosexuality–that they were, probably, homosexuals themselves. I asked
a rhetorical question–“Is Scalzi a bigot?” I answered no, then,
because I didn’t know him well. Anyway, he came by the blog and argued
with me. Now, at the time, I had quite a bit of respect for him. I liked
Old Man’s War, as a fan of Heinlein, and though it didn’t reach that
level of quality, it was entertaining.

What resulted was a long
conversation where he insulted me over and over again, never read a
single post I’d made, argued against strawmen, and showed a disturbing
ignorance of what people actually believe. And yes, I do believe he
threw around his education credentials. I didn’t bother telling him
that I have an MA in a philosophical field as well, because it wouldn’t
have mattered to him.

He tried to argue that it wasn’t insulting
to call people gay because he didn’t think there was anything wrong
with being gay. So I say, what if I went around saying that all Jews
were greedy money-grubbers. He got really offended by that and started
insulting me again. I said, hey, I don’t think there’s anything wrong
with being a greedy money-grubber. I’m a capitalist. I think that’s when
he gave up and went away.

But after that exchange, I never bought another of his books. I’ve read a few, but I’m not giving this guy money. He’s an idiot.

He’s
got an ego that’s a few times too large for his actual talent. Like
those A students who get to college and realize they aren’t actually as
good as everyone says, or those singers who go on American Idol and make
fools of themselves all the while thinking they’re great. It’s a sad,
sad, thing. But after my exchange with him, nothing that’s happened in
SFWA since he became president as been any surprise to me.

Agathis picked up on something that a surprising number of people don’t realize about McRapey.  The man is less intelligent than most people assume.  He is considerably less intelligent than most of the people with whom I habitually engage.  He’s not as smart as PZ Myers, Sam Harris, or Richard Dawkins, and you are all familiar with how easily I have dismantled their arguments.  The difficulty in dealing with McRapey is that he seldom presents any actual arguments, he usually just presents assertions sans any logical or evidential support.  Then, when pressed, he makes a credentialist appeal to his college degree.  Not even a PhD or a Masters, just a simple liberal arts BA, as if that’s supposed to impress people who have more advanced or more difficult degrees. And then he flees from public debate while openly banning dissent and criticism from his blog, all to the thunderous foot-thumping approval of his fellow rabbits.

For those who find it hard to believe that Scalzi isn’t highly intelligent, I suggest asking him for evidence of his National Merit scholarship or his qualification for Mensa.  It seems a little odd that someone who doesn’t hesitate to trumpet his credentials would fail to mention such achievements, and surely someone who asserts a “Scalzi family tradition of blowing the doors off standardized tests” would have qualified for both, right?

McRapey’s heavy reliance on his minor academic credential tells us another important thing about him: he is from an environment where going to university was not considered par for the course, so he places a ludicrous amount of importance on it. Once I finish On Sophistical Refutations, I will show that to the extent McRapey learned anything while majoring in philosophy, it was to resort to sophistry rather than genuinely refuting an argument.

His behavior is fairly typical of men who are raised by women. If such men don’t turn entirely feral, they are taught to believe that the winner of a dispute is the one who comes off as looking better to the crowd rather than the one whose arguments are more closely in line with facts, logic, and reality. 

Also, since he appears to have run out of ideas, I’ve created a template that should save Phoenician a little time in commenting on these regularly scheduled McRapey posts.


“______ mancrush ______ obsession _______ laughing at _______ Dipshit ______ your father_______ jealous ________ self-made ______ lawn ______”

Speaking of which, does anyone have a reference count?  Have we hit 200 yet?

Mailvox: the changing writer’s market

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

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

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

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

If you have a minute, I appreciate your insight.

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is a game-changer.

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

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

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