Sillybean

Changing Publishing

Can we put Michael Tamblyn in charge of US publishing? All of it? Like, right now?

Some highlights from his presentation, 6 Projects That Could Change Publishing for the Better:

DRM is the biggest problem with ebook readers. Not digital rights management, but date repulsion mode. The physical objects are not attractive! On Tamblyn’s scale of things [...]

the greying of SF: not a myth

Over in a nice discussion of the generation gap in SF on Tor.com, a commenter crunches numbers on the ages of Hugo winners and comes up with a pretty clear trend. Really fascinating, assuming you care about this sort of thing in the first place.

ETA: A handy graph, all color-coded and shit, via Tobias [...]

Translation from Aburt-speak to English of selected portions of his SFWA presidential platform[1]

Burt’s campaign posters

cf. Dr. Andrew Burt for SFWA President. See also A Gut Check Moment for SFWA.

Greetings gentlebeings!

I am embarrassingly out of touch with modern culture.

As I indicated last year, my hat is in the ring for SFWA President.

I am oblivious to the number of people who renewed their memberships to write in votes against [...]

RWA National and SF cons, compare and contrast

After eleven years of SF conventions, RWA National was … different. Convention neepery follows; run away now if you don’t care about this sort of thing.

For starters, I’m more or less used to being in the minority at SF cons. (I haven’t been to WisCon. I will.) RWA National consists of two thousand women, give [...]

Breaking news: publishers’ math “fuzzy.” Film at 11.

The current issue of Entertainment Weekly has an amusing story about the court case between Clive Cussler and the studio who made Sahara. Here’s the part that made me fall out of my chair (emphasis mine):

More pointedly, though, the producers also accused the novelist of lying about how many fans he actually has. ”Sahara didn’t [...]

Writing progress

Courtesy of my drug-resistent insomnia: “Backtalk,” 650 words. Almost done. (Yes, very short.) I couldn’t quite think of an ending, but hey, it was four in the morning.

…yeah, the 4 a.m. dribblings of my sleepless mind are not what I’d call fit for publication, but I think I know where I want to take this [...]

Attention, publishers

This is what you should be doing with your websites.

None of that takes a huge budget, really, but it does take a dedicated webmaster and not the last dregs of “spare time” contributed by already-overworked editors.

News bytes

My sidelink gizmo is borked thanks to the WordPress upgrade, so here’s a handful:

Joss Whedon and John Cassaday are going to do another year of X-Men (whoop!)
There’s a Martian sea
Charlie Stross expounds on cold-bloodedly designing a fantasy series
John Scalzi explains the difficulty in playing ‘I Never’ in fandom

It looks like Patrick and Teresa have a [...]

PA and Atlanta Nights

Atlanta Nights is the hottest book going at the moment.

What the hell is Atlanta Nights?

It’s a book (I use the term loosely) written by a cadre of SF writers in order to prove that Publish America does not, in fact, screen its slush for any semblance of quality.

How bad is it? Jim Macdonald writes:

Two chapter [...]

Children, play nice…

We have visitors from Neil Gaiman’s blog with us today.

Update: excellent advice on agent-getting strategy.

Book contracts analysis

Michelle Sagara West should be on your daily reading list if you’re a writer, but this week she’s going WAY beyond the call of duty and typing in a first novel contract with explanations and commentary. She has to split the thing up to keep the entries manageable, so use the “Next” button at the [...]

Stross on ebooks and free books

Another Very Important Link, this time for writers. Charlie Stross has taken the time to explain why authors should give their work away for free online.

Say what? you think.

My theory is this: reading online sucks, but those of us who are readers do it anyway, up to the point at which it gets too painful [...]

Wrath of the Slush God

Incurring the Divine Wrath and Garnering the Divine Favor of the Slush God. Most of this should be fairly obvious, but it never hurts to hear it from the slush reader himself.

The Edsels of the world of moveable type

’The Book of my Enemy Has Been Remaindered’, by Clive James.

I’ve been wanting to read this poem since I finished Bird by Bird, and PNH has kindly provided a link. (Check out Electrolite’s spiffy new favicon, too.)

Cover letters for asshats

Teresa Nielsen Hayden has found some really dreadful advice on writing cover letters:

Tip Four: Still worried? Never published anything? Lie a little. Yes, lie. A cover letter is a persuasive document designed to do one thing: entice an editor or agent to read your manuscript. Say whatever you have to, within reason, to accomplish [...]