Eisler vs. Hocking
I haven’t done a comic in a while, so figured I’d share my two cents on Amanda Hocking’s commercial publishing deal and Barry Eisler’s decision to self-publish.
I haven’t done a comic in a while, so figured I’d share my two cents on Amanda Hocking’s commercial publishing deal and Barry Eisler’s decision to self-publish.
Good morning, all!
First off, I wanted to thank everyone for all of the support on yesterday’s post, and to welcome the new readers. I’ve gotten a lot of comments and e-mail, so my apologies if I haven’t responded to everything yet. I’m working on it.
I’ve spoken to several of the authors who pulled their WPT stories, but if those authors choose to take me up on my offer, it will still take some time to read the stories and get contracts drawn up and signed and so on. That said, I’ll definitely announce things as soon as I have anything to announce.
Other assorted updates:
1) Author Lisa Mantchev posted on Twitter yesterday that the Wicked Pretty Things anthology has been cancelled by the publisher. Given the number of authors who pulled out of the project, and the public outcry, I’m not surprised. I haven’t seen any announcement or release from the publisher yet.
2) Cleolinda on LJ has a good roundup of the WPT situation, including some background information.
3) The unraffle fundraiser I’m running for rape crisis centers has raised $840 so far. If we pass $1000, I’ll draw another winner and give that person a cameo in Libriomancer. Details here.
4) Being kicked in the kneecap hurts. (This brilliant insight is brought to you courtesy of last night’s karate class.)
Last night, my six-year-old and I had a chat. I don’t remember how it came up, but he was talking about people getting married, and how boys have to marry girls. I pointed out that this wasn’t necessarily so, that in some states and many countries, boys could marry boys and girls could marry girls.
Being six, he laughed. “That’s silly. How would they have babies?”
It’s not the first time we’ve had a talk like this. I understand where his confusion comes from. Pretty much every cartoon on TV has male/female relationships only. Every movie he watches, every book he brings home from school… Any nonheterosexual relationship is simply erased.
Last month, Jessica Verday withdrew her story from the Wicked Pretty Things anthology after receiving a note from the editor which stated that her story “would have to be published as a male/female story because a male/male story would not be acceptable to the publishers.”
Wicked Pretty Things is an anthology of dark fairy romance … but apparently editor Trisha Telep assumed that meant straight romance only, going with the default erasure of any “nontraditional” relationships.
Verday later posted a response in which Telep apologized for causing offense, and said in part, “I sincerely regret the sequence of events which has led to Jessica Verday’s story ‘Flesh Which Is Not Flesh’ being excluded from the forthcoming anthology Wicked Pretty Things. This has been the result of a misunderstanding on my part which is entirely regrettable … I fully support LGBTQ issues.”
I understand and believe that Telep meant no harm. That it was a mistake, not intended to be hurtful. But it was hurtful.
Other authors such as Seanan McGuire, Lisa Mantchev, Lesley Livingston, and Karen Mahoney have pulled their stories from the anthology. Melissa Marr asked that her name not be used to promote the project (she had provided a cover blurb Correction: they were apparently describing the anthology as including stories with a “Melissa Marr-ish slant.”) Ann Aguirre pulled her story from another of Telep’s projects.
Running Press responded in an article titled The Misinformation Age, saying, “Third-party error and miscommunication went viral and led to the spread of untrue accusations of intolerance and censorship.”
Where exactly are these untrue accusations? I’m not aware of any lies in Verday’s post, or in the posts by the other authors involved. Is intolerance an inappropriate word to describe an editor who says “No gay love allowed,” even if it was a misunderstanding?
More importantly, why was this an issue to begin with? The publisher may have disavowed responsibility for Telep’s actions, but why did Telep immediately assume that a story in which two male characters were in love would be unacceptable?
Pulling a story from an anthology is scary. You risk alienating editor and publisher both, not to mention turning down a paycheck. You worry about appearing unprofessional. And you wonder if you’ll find another home for the story you worked so hard on…
I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and I’d like to extend an offer to any author who pulled his or her story from one of Telep’s projects as a result of this incident.
I get about 2000 unique readers each day, which is comparable to (or in some cases better than) the sales for a number of the anthologies out there. That said, I’ll certainly understand if the authors choose to look elsewhere. It sounds like Verday has already found another home for her story, which is great. My offer is not time-limited.
I am not trying to poach authors from Running Press. However, I do want to support and thank those authors who’ve chosen to publicly state that the erasure of non-straight characters and relationships is not okay. One way I can do that is by offering a home for those stories.
A few links for your Saturday morning…
Cat Valente on e-book pricing.
C. E. Petit on the Google Books Settlement.
A Dreamwidth post which talks about the politics behind the DDoS attacks on LiveJournal (via Sherwood Smith).
Tobias Buckell on his first year of selling his e-published short fiction collection Tides from New Worlds. (Lots of data and graphs here.)
Why your Self-Publishing Service Probably Didn’t Cheat You, from Writer Beware.
And finally, Jim C. Hines’ Fundraiser for Rape Crisis Centers, which has raised more than $700 so far. If we pass $1000, I’ll pick one winner and give him/her a cameo in Libriomancer.
LiveJournal has been hit by repeated DDoS attacks lately, which has been incredibly frustrating. I’m not leaving LJ – I’m not about to give the hackers the satisfaction. That said, for those who might be missing their daily fix of Jim-babble, my blog is hosted on my site, complete with an RSS feed, and is also mirrored at Dreamwidth. But I’m a-staying on LJ, too.
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Folks have now donated more than $600 in the Fundraiser for Rape Crisis Centers! Go us! So in addition to an ARC of The Snow Queen’s Shadow, I’ll be picking another winner to receive an autographed copy of Goblin Tales.
Any suggestions for a third prize if we reach $1000 in donations?
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From an e-mail exchange with Pat Rothfuss.
Jim: At ConFusion next year, I plan to eat your heart and claim your authorly power for myself. I just thought it polite to give you a heads-up.
Pat: Ha! You fool! I keep my power in my pancreas! Nobody ever eats that…
Jim: Dude, I’m diabetic. Stealing your fully-functional pancreas would be a double-win for me!
So when you come to ConFusion next year where I’m toastmaster and Pat is GoH, if you see me happily dining on pancreas, now you know why.
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Finally, from the Department of Unexpectedly Awesome, I present LEGO + McDonalds + Podracing, created by GeekyTom. Only one picture, but worth clicking the pic for a close-up.
Donations as of 4/30/11: $1553
April is sexual assault awareness month.
Last year, I ran a fundraiser that raised more than $1500 in donations to various rape crisis centers. I would love to see if we can break $2000 this year.
Michigan law appears to prohibit raffles, so I’ll once again be using the unraffle model, giving away an advance review copy of The Snow Queen’s Shadow [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy].
I am asking you to make a donation, either to RAINN or to your local rape crisis center. RAINN has announced that donations made at http://www.rainn.org/mickfoley during the month of April will be doubled, meaning your donation goes twice as far. Many places will also allow you to donate online. But donations are not required to enter the drawing.
To enter, all you have to do is e-mail endrape@jimchines.com. If you do make a donation, please mention that in the e-mail and let me know how much you gave. I don’t care if it’s $1 or $1000, and it makes no difference to the drawing, but I’ll be tracking and posting how much we’ve raised.
The winner will be drawn at random from all entries on April 30. One e-mail per person, please.
For every $500 raised (up to $5000), I’ll throw in an additional drawing for other prizes.
If you’d like to spread the word, you can copy and paste the following into your blog, which will add a smaller version of the image above and a link back to the original post. Please feel free to modify as needed, and thank you.
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A few statistics:
The Sexual Victimization of College Women, Page 10: “Over the course of a college career — which now lasts an average of 5 years — the percentage of completed or attempted rape victimization among women in higher educational institutions might climb to between one-fifth and one-quarter.”
World Health Organization report on Violence Against Women: “In a random sample of 420 women in Toronto, Canada, 40% reported at least one episode of forced sexual intercourse since the age of 16.”
Prevalence, Incidence and Consequences of Violence Against Women Survey, page 3: “1 of 6 U.S. women … experienced an attempted or completed rape.” (14.8% reported completed, 2.8% reported attempted only.)
Goblin Tales [Amazon | B&N | Lulu] picked up reviews at SciFiChick (“This must-read collection…”) and Romantic Times (“…a fabulous introduction to Hines’ writing, his world of goblins, and his world of Libriomancy all in one — who can pass up a 3-fer?”)
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A month or so back, I was invited to write a guest blog post for the Organization for Transformative Works. Here’s a sneak peek:
I’ve seen the whole spectrum of opinions, from “Fanfiction is the Devil’s Prose!” to “Fanfiction is so much better than that commercial dreck.” I don’t buy either view. Fanfiction is fanfiction. Some is brilliant. Some is abysmal. Fanfic authors sometimes get criticized for not writing commercially, but that makes as little sense as criticizing a fantasy author for not writing fortune cookies. For most of us, we write what we love, and we do it because we love it.
Full post is here.
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Finally, does anyone else remember M.A.S.K., an 80s cartoon and toy line about vehicles and buildings with hidden weapons, concealed mini-vehicles, and also lots of masks? Orion Pax (the same individual who built a transforming Optimus Prime from LEGO) has been working on LEGO M.A.S.K., including a working version of Boulder Hill, the good guys’ HQ.
We had these toys! I remember playing with this set. This blows my mind. Click here or the thumbnails for the full photo set.
A handful of people asked whether they would be able to get a print edition of Goblin Tales [Amazon | B&N]. Had I known at the time how long it would take to get the manuscript properly typeset, to create a full-wrap cover, to get my test proof copy in the mail, to go back and completely redo the typesetting–
Fortunately, I didn’t know! And I’m happy to announce that over the weekend, the USPS delivered the following to my door:
It’s roughly mass market sized (about 2-3 millimeters larger), 132 pages, and is priced at $7.99 through Lulu.
Interesting note: with most commercial publishers, the actual printing/paper doesn’t make up a significant portion of a book’s cost, due in part to the large print runs. But that’s not the case with a print-on-demand service. Despite the higher cover price, I end up making significantly less on the print edition: about $.50 vs. $2 for the e-book.
On the other hand, I admit to being a bit old-school, and I like having a book I can add to my ego shelf 🙂
I also just really like the look of the typeset page.
I’m working on enabling the download feature at Lulu, which would let people purchase a PDF file. That should eventually be available for $2.99, but I don’t know when Lulu will update the product page with the download info.
Lulu also has the PDF file for sale, which can be downloaded for $2.99.
I’m still waiting for Kobo to add the e-book to their site, and I’m continuing to talk to Wizard’s Tower about distribution. But for those who wanted a printed version of the book, it’s all yours. There’s even a coupon code: enter SPRINGREAD at checkout and you should get 20% off if you order by March 31.
My thanks to typesetting guru barbarienne, and everyone else who helped out with suggestions and feedback.
If anyone has questions about the process, I’m happy to share.
As many of you probably already know, author Diana Wynne Jones passed away on Saturday.
Jones is partly responsible for the character of Golaka the chef in my goblin series. Back in late 2000, as I was finishing up the first draft of Goblin Quest, I picked up a copy of her book The Tough Guide to Fantasyland [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy]. This book was exactly what I needed as a newish writer, being a guidebook/dictionary to generic fantasyland, including every cliche and trope from Dark Lords to Eye Color to “reek of wrongness.”
It also has an entry for Stew, the official — indeed sometimes the only — meal of Fantasyland.
Now, let me share with you the never-before seen opening paragraphs from the very first draft of Goblin Quest:
Jig’s spoon sank forgotten into his bowl of stew as he tried to back further into the shadows. To his left, his friend Brak moaned.
“He’s going to choose us this time. I know it.”
“Hush,” Jig snapped. He tried not to panic, but even Golara’s wonderful stew couldn’t stop the knot of fear tightening around his heart.
I cringed when I read the “Stew” entry in The Tough Guide. Fortunately, it was only a first draft. I still had time to fix this! I went online and began researching different recipes, trying to adapt them for goblin cuisine.
Golara became Golaka, and soon she was preparing spicy rat dumplings and pickled toadstools and pot pies. She became interesting, and eventually turned into one of my favorite characters in the series.
I wonder how many other struggling new authors Jones helped with that book, which was such a brilliant idea — sharply written and highly amusing. If you appreciated Golaka and her rather twisted recipes, thank Diana Wynne Jones. And if you haven’t read Neil Gaiman’s post “Being Alive. Mostly About Diana.” go do it now.
Was feeling a bit raw after that last post, so I decided I needed a good news chaser.
1. Yesterday I typed “THE END” on the first draft of Libriomancer. It’s a short draft, and needs a lot of work, but it’s a finished draft, and I’ve got some ideas on what I need to fix to make it better.
2. I’ve also got page proofs for The Snow Queen’s Shadow [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy], meaning production is moving right along on that book. I should even be seeing ARCs soon 🙂
3. Goblin Tales [Amazon | B&N] has sold 101 copies on Amazon, another 48 on B&N, and is now available on iBooks as well. (Still working on Kobo, and I’m talking to Wizard’s Tower Press about getting it up there, which looks to be a bit friendlier for international sales.)
Your turn. Share some good news in the comments, and spread the happy.